Alcatel Lands Scarlet Deal

PARIS -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) today announced that it has been chosen by Scarlet, a large competitive operator in Belgium and the Netherlands, as strategic technology provider for the roll out of Scarlet’s broadband infrastructure and for the integration of innovative broadband services in both countries. As a first step, Alcatel will deliver a broadband access infrastructure in Belgium and the Netherlands. Alcatel’s overall solution also includes broadband aggregation optical transport solutions, integration, operation and maintenance services.

By transitioning to a facilities based broadband provider, Scarlet is supporting its quickly expanding customer base. For Scarlet, having their own broadband network is very important as it will decrease the cost of leasing DSL lines from other service providers, and it will allow Scarlet to react faster and more flexibly to changing market requirements with appealing new broadband services.

Gilbert de Bree, Chief Technology Officer, of Scarlet commented: ” Scarlet has selected the Alcatel 7300 ASAM because of its ability to support our ‘all over DSL’ strategy. It will support our current ATM based portfolio and enabling IP-based services from the start of the rollout, together with ADSL2plus capabilities. Scarlet will be able to support market needs for IP based services requiring significantly more bandwidth than today’s offered services. In a future step, we intend to select Alcatel for an end-to-end integrated IPTV solution in collaboration with Microsoft”, concluded Mr. De Bree.

According to Tjeerd X. van Sitteren, Chief Business Development Officer, “Scarlet has chosen to rollout its own DSLAM network to create full independence, flexibility and the ability to develop new services to support market needs. Scarlet aims to finalize the DSLAM rollout by mid 2006 thus have broadband coverage in 75% of both the Netherlands and Belgium”.

“It’s interesting to see how the broadband access market is rapidly evolving, and several smaller emerging alternate service providers are claiming their piece of the broadband opportunity, which is enabled by local loop unbundling,” said Michel Rahier, chief operating officer of Alcatel’s fixed communications activities. “Scarlet is now taking a step forward. The breadth of our portfolio and services, and our experience in the broadband market, enables Scarlet to evolve towards the service Triple Play of voice, video and data.”

Scarlet B.V.

Alcatel