Alcatel, Dallah Sign

PARIS -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) and Dallah Telecom, an affiliate of Dallah Al Baraka Group, a Middle Eastern content provider and a new media licensee of the 2006 FIFA World Cup TM, announced today they have signed an agreement to jointly provide mobile operators in the Middle East and North Africa with a fully hosted turnkey mobile multimedia portal solution. This project will enable the new media coverage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup? in the region and will allow more football fans to interactively experience and enjoy the most exciting and decisive moments of all 64 matches on their mobile phones.

The service is available in English, French and Arabic.

In this cooperation, Dallah Telecom provides the content and Alcatel provides its technical solution known as "Mobile Kiosk". Mobile Kiosk is a full turnkey solution that allows content aggregation and service delivery in a hosted and operated mode. It will enable Dallah Telecom to distribute its exclusive new media content of the 2006 FIFA World Cup? to mobile operators in seven countries including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, and Jordan. This is the first deployment of Alcatel's Mobile Kiosk solution in a multi-operator, multi-country context. Addressing 25 million potential users, the project, will also increase mobile data usage in the region.

The turnkey solution provided to Dallah Telecom includes design of the services (story board, look and feel), deployment of the platforms, customization and integration with operators (SMS-C, MMS-C, Wap gateway and billing), monitoring, as well as publishing during the event.

The solution is fully hosted, operated and integrated by Alcatel's Regional Competence Center in Portugal. Drawing on its extensive expertise on Mobile Kiosk in Portugal, the Center provides a team of local managed solution experts as well as a set of local services to help operators and their partners.

Mr. Amr Kamel, CEO of Dallah Telecom declared; "Alcatel's leadership in advanced video and mobile multimedia services, confirms the company as a key partner for this project. Today football through mobile is the ultimate mass-market entertainment in this region. The Alcatel solution will allow us to freely and cost-effectively create, shape, format, and distribute news, images and videos content either downloaded or streamed on mobile handsets. With Alcatel as a technical partner, we are confident that our innovative multimedia mobile portal will be a true success."

Alcatel (NYSE: ALA; Paris: CGEP:PA)