Lucent Wins Services Deal

MURRAY HILL, N.J. -- Telecom New Zealand has today signed a $100 million agreement with Lucent Technologies for the global network provider to manage its 027 CDMA mobile network.

The agreement with Lucent is for five years and is one of the most extensive management service agreements in the world among mobile network operators.

Lucent, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., America, through its Lucent Worldwide Services division (LWS), is responsible for the network planning, design, deployment, support, and overall management of Telecom's 027 CDMA network. Lucent was responsible for building and deploying the CDMA network for Telecom 18 months ago. It was the first commercial CDMA 1X (a 3G technology) wireless network in Australasia.

Telecom General Manager Network Investment, Stephen Crombie, said the agreement with a global communications leader like Lucent means Telecom CDMA network customers will benefit from new world class developments and services much more quickly.

"Globally, telcos want to lower costs, focus on core business and swiftly provide top quality new services to customers. Our agreement with Lucent delivers all this," said Mr Crombie.

"Lucent is at the cutting edge of the technology and that means our customers can be certain they'll get the latest, high quality services," said Mr Crombie. "About 50 Telecom staff will transfer to Lucent and they'll benefit from being part of a global leader in the sector."

Lucent Chief Executive Officer for Australia and New Zealand Bart Vogel said, "Our agreement with Telecom is a major step forward in our relationship. Telecom was confident we could successfully build its CDMA mobile network and that's led to our now managing its operation."

"The Telecom / Lucent agreement is an example of the emerging growth in the Managed Services market," said Joseph Bova, vice president of Managed Services for LWS. "Now, Telecom, already a global telecommunications leader in network performance, is free to focus on its core business activities as a way of differentiating its business while taking advantage of a new business model that assures network reliability and cost reduction. Managed Services is a major opportunity for Telecom because of Lucent's extensive knowledge and experience in managing, operating and designing the world's most complex networks coupled with the industry's premier innovation engine, Bell Labs."

LWS is one of the largest service organisations focused on telecommunications providers in the world with around 12,000 engineers, technicians and consultants focused on helping customers' deploy, manage and optimise their networks. LWS delivers networks for the world's largest communications and service providers.

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Telecom New Zealand Ltd.