PARIS -- Alcatel announced today that it has provided Public Telecommunications Corporation of Yemen (PTC) with twenty-one high capacity Alcatel 1000 Multimedia Multiservices (MM) switches to modernize and expand their network. As part of this contract, Alcatel will supply PTC with more than 164,000 new telephone lines across the country. The first exchange cut over for PTC's upgraded network was inaugurated on July 17th, 2001. AbdulMalak AL Mua'limi, Minister of Communications, Yemen, said: "PTC has decided to upgrade its entire network with the aim of providing even better service to its clients. With the Alcatel 1000 MM system, we will enable our customers to access high-speed Internet access and multimedia services. Furthermore, these new systems will significantly raise our network capacity and will reduce drastically our costs in network engineering and operating systems (OPEX)."Alcatel SA