Alcatel will provide broadband access, customer care services and highway security systems in French Polynesia and New Caledonia. In Europe, Siemens will build two 3G/W-CDMA networks for Vodafone Malta and Tele2 Eesti AS, Estonia.

Alcatel has been awarded a series of contracts worth 10.4 million Euros by two operators in the Pacific islands to provide broadband access, customer care services and highway security systems.

In French Polynesia, Alcatel will deploy a broadband access network using the Alcatel 7302 Integrated Services Access Manager (ISAM) for the Office des Postes et Télécommunications (OPT). The network is expected to meet customer demand for high speed Internet access. Alcatel’s broadband access network will enable OPT French Polynesia to offer advanced services such as IPTV and eventually triple play (voice, data, and video). Alcatel’s solution will also extend the operator’s broadband service reach to less dense and remote rural areas (e.g. Marquesas and Leeward Group islands).

For the Office des Postes et Telecommunications (OPT) in New Caledonia, Alcatel will deploy advanced billing systems. Valued at 5.7 million Euros, the advanced billing systems will improve OPT New Caledonia’s billing for prepaid and post-paid customers. Alcatel will deploy its Prepaid Suites solution so that OPT New Caledonia can support and launch advanced and flexible tariff plans for voice, data, and content prepaid on its GPRS mobile network. Alcatel Prepaid Suites runs on Alcatel’s Intelligent Network, a comprehensive platform which provides real time advanced, convergent and cost-effective payment services to operators’ fixed, mobile, prepaid and postpaid subscriber bases. Both prepaid and post-paid new billing solutions are expected to be operational by the end of July 2006.

Alcatel will also provide OPT New Caledonia and highway operator Savexpress with the island’s first telecommunications-based highway security network. Under this 3.7 million Euro contract, Alcatel will deploy an integrated network including fibre optics, call boxes, video cameras and variable message panels designed to enable multimedia data communications services for video surveillance, traffic information and urgency communication. Alcatel will also deliver a range of professional services such as site survey and network design, installation and commissioning and operation and maintenance.

In Europe, Vodafone Malta Ltd. has contracted with the Siemens Communications Group to build its 3G/W-CDMA network that will cover the entire island of Malta. The network will be available to personal users, business customers and tourists later this year. Siemens has been an exclusive supplier to Vodafone Malta since 1997 and has already built its GSM network.

In Northern Europe, in Estonia, Tele2 Eesti AS has contracted with the Siemens Communications Group to build a complete 3G network. Tele2 Eesti is a subsidiary of Swedish-based Tele2 AB.

“Only a few months ago, we began delivering and installing a complete 3G network for Tele2 in Latvia. We are pleased that Estonia, too, is now traveling the path to 3G together with us, and that with our infrastructure we have again been able to create the foundation for future broadband data services like music downloads to mobile handsets,� said Christoph Caselitz, the President of the Mobile Networks Division at Siemens Communications.

In addition to 3G technology, Siemens will also be supplying Tele2 Eesti AS with radio and core equipment for its GSM network and upgrading existing circuit- and packet-switched network elements to ready them for W-CDMA operation.