Company Press Release:
 
Alcatel and SFR are researching mobile broadcasting solutions

Paris, September 8, 2006 - Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) and SFR announced today their collaboration in the field of mobile broadcasting in France. The objective of the joint effort is to validate business prospects for mobile TV broadcasting and evaluate the technical performance of Alcatel's "Unlimited Mobile TV", a hybrid satellite and terrestrial solution in the S-Band. This solution has received the support from the French Industrial Innovation Agency.

Alcatel and SFR are working together on different growth scenarios for the mobile TV market in France, as well as on a variety of marketing approaches to match different usage profiles and consumption models. Initial joint analyses of the potential revenues and cost of this innovative service in France tends to confirm interest in this new market. The usage patterns studied will be used to meet the needs of mobile TV users, whether in transit (with individual or public modes of transport), or nomadic (static) either outdoors or indoors (at home, at the office, or in public places such as shopping malls).

In addition, for the past few months the two companies have been conducting a technical evaluation of Alcatel's proposed system. Alcatel and SFR have exchanged comparative deployment cost information for the different mobile broadcasting solutions. Alcatel provided SFR with information regarding configuration, as well as the number of sites needed to deploy such an S-band network, and the two companies have jointly validated certain technical and cost hypotheses associated with this deployment.

As stated by Jean-Dominique Pit, SFR Director of Strategy and Innovation, "SFR is convinced that mobile TV will be among the important services offered to its customers and wishes to provide them with an excellent technical solution combining a wealth of content with high quality coverage. This is why we are going to pursue joint efforts with Alcatel." He added that "The 2006 FIFA World Cup showed a very strong attraction of worldwide customers for mobile TV services that are easily accessible, anywhere and any time. In France, SFR customers downloaded 1.4 million videos between June 9 and July 9, and subscribed to 140,000 goal alerts, 73% of those involving the French team. It is clear that future major international sporting events will help mobile TV come into widespread use, which will require effective broadcasting solutions, truly accessible everywhere and to everybody at the same time."
 


About SFR (www.sfr.fr)
With 17.4  million customers and 8,000 employees, SFR is the second largest mobile telecommunications operator in France and has been the market leader in terms of net sales (new customers) since 2003. Operating its own GSM/GPRS and UMTS/HSDPA networks, SFR is able to provide a complete range of mobile telephony and multimedia services, as well as mobile data solutions to its personal, SOHO and business customers. SFR has become the operator of choice for new uses of mobile phones, having been the first operator to launch 3G  and 3G+  services on the French market, and now boasts 1.5  million exclusively 3G customers. The company is also a player on the fixed telecommunications market through its interest in neuf cegetel, the leading alternative operator on the French market. SFR benefits from a stable ownership structure, with two major shareholders, Vivendi (56%) and Vodafone (44%).

About Alcatel
Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or employees. Alcatel brings its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services, to help its partners and customers build a user-centric broadband world. With sales of EURO 13.1 billion and 58,000 employees in 2005, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com

About Alcatel's "Unlimited Mobile TV" solution
The goal of Alcatel's "Unlimited Mobile TV" solution is to make television available on mobile phones throughout rural and urban areas, including indoors, with a wide range of programming options and excellent image quality, regardless of the number of viewers simultaneously watching the same program. This universal coverage is possible thanks to the unique combination of country-wide satellite coverage and terrestrial mobile networks for dense city coverage and interactivity. This innovative solution uses an evolution of the DVB-H standard in the S band, a telecom frequency band around 2.2 GHz associated with satellite usage, which is adjacent to the 3G/UMTS band and widely available across continents.