Alcatel in Korean PON Trial

PARIS -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) today announced that Hanaro Telecom, Korea's leading competitive service provider, has selected Alcatel for its Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON) trial in Korea. This commercial pilot signals a major breakthrough for GPON in the Korean market and in the greater North-East Asian region.

The GPON trial, which started in October 2006, is using a future-proof fiber access technology capable of delivering ultra-high speeds of 100 Mbps. Upon the successful completion of the trial, Hanaro Telecom will be able to build an all-fiber access network, enabling advanced triple play services - including high-speed internet, high definition video, and multi-player interactive gaming - much to the benefit of Korean households.

"Alcatel's scalable and flexible access network will allow us to host a wealth of applications, delivering greater value to our customers and optimizing costs," said Minho Bae, Senior Manager, Technical Planning Team of Hanaro Telecom. "We are seeing GPON becoming the key fiber-to-the-user (FTTU) standard worldwide with increased adoption of this technology. By trialing GPON with Alcatel, we are achieving our target in terms of innovation and performance and creating the framework for an ultra-high speed broadband access network."

Hanaro Telecom is deploying the Alcatel 7342 Intelligent Services Access Manager fiber-to-the-user (ISAM FTTU), a solution designed to provide the high data rates, interoperability and quality of service (QoS) that service providers need to advance the adoption of triple play services by the subscribers. Alcatel's solution ideally satisfies customer demand for high bandwidth, user-centric broadband services at the cost of copper access.

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