Thomson/Cirpack Wins

PARIS -- Thomson (Euronext 18453; NYSE; TMS) today announced that its Cirpack softswitch solutions have been selected by Telefonia Dialog, Poland’s largest independent telecom operator, to increase the capacity and simplify the structure of their legacy telephone networks, as well as to prepare its infrastructure for massive deployment of voice over broadband. This announcement places Thomson in a unique position to help Polish operators migrate to Next Generation Networks and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) infrastructures for the delivery of fixed and mobile multimedia services.

In this initial phase, Telefonia Dialog is using Thomson’s Cirpack softswitches to improve the transit capacity of its long distance voice infrastructure, creating new interconnection points with other carriers with both SS7 and VoIP technologies. Using Cirpack’s advanced voice routing mechanisms, Dialog is now also capable of providing extra services such as 800 numbers, carrier pre-select and prepaid telephony.

According to Eurostat, costs of both traditional telephony and internet access in Poland are high due to lack of competition. By upgrading their networks to the latest voice switching technologies from Thomson, Telefonia Dialog can manage more traffic with a better quality and offer more attractive services at a much lower cost.

In a second phase later this year, Dialog intends to leverage its Thomson softswitching infrastructure to deliver primary line telephone services into new geographical areas using Voice over IP over DSL. As the Polish Office of Electronical Communications recently passed legislation obliging Poland’s incumbent telecom operator to rent their DSL lines to other ISPs for 50% lower prices, independent forecasts show that fixed telephony will be steadily substituted for VoIP in Poland.

Dialog’s Vice President, Mr Andrzej Kryszyñski commented “We organised a tender to see which suppliers had the strongest technology and widest experience in the softswitch field. Thomson provided us with many examples of successful deployments of their Cirpack platforms in many different type of applications. The Cirpack deployment in our network proved that this is the most advanced solution from a technical point of view and we are confident it is the ideal platform for Dialog to build its new PSTN and VoIP services.”

Jean-Pierre Dumolard, General Manager of Thomson’s Next Generation Networks business unit commented “We are pleased to announce our first Cirpack customer in Poland. This project is quite different, as Dialog is using Thomson’s Cirpack switches to create an intelligent network environment to connect its legacy voice infrastructure to service platforms as well as to provide transit capacity to other operators. This proves that Thomson’s Cirpack switches are equally as efficient for legacy networks as for VoIP.”

Thomson S.A. (NYSE: TMS; Euronext Paris: 18453)