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VIVACOM selects Alcatel-Lucent to help drive its strategic transformation


WEBWIRE

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona - Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and VIVACOM, the leading telecommunications operator in Bulgaria, today announced a five-year partnership focusing on end-to-end strategic transformation of VIVACOM’s fixed and mobile network throughout the country. VIVACOM is outsourcing end-to-end network operations to Alcatel-Lucent as of March 1, 2010.

Through partnering with Alcatel-Lucent to outsource its network operations, VIVACOM will be able to concentrate on its core business, reduce its operating expenses and ensure increased network quality. This relationship also ensures the development and fast deployment of new user-oriented services and solutions. As part of this agreement about3,000 VIVACOM employees will join Alcatel-Lucent under their existing terms and conditions of service.

“Our decision to enter a strategic partnership with Alcatel-Lucent is designed to guarantee our fixed and mobile subscribers a network of a constantly increasing quality over the long term,” said Bernard Moscheni, CEO of VIVACOM. “Alcatel-Lucent is perfectly equipped to meet our network operations requirements with greater speed, flexibility and cost synergies than we could alone. And with this step, we’re once again playing a pioneering role on the Bulgarian market.”

The move is the final stage of VIVACOM’s strategic transformation which kicked off at the beginning of last year with the merger of its mobile and fixed services businesses and continued with its rebranding in September 2009 with the ultimate goal to change VIVACOM from a technical to a client-oriented company. It is a logical consequence of the trends and changes in the global telecommunications market and shows an example of corporate development in line with the global approach to customer expectations.

Alcatel-Lucent will bring VIVACOM the experience gained from designing, deploying, operating, maintaining and expanding more than 85 networks supporting more than 185 million subscribers worldwide.

“The selection of Alcatel-Lucent will enable VIVACOM to lower its operating expenses and ensures that VIVACOM customers will receive services of top quality,” said Andy Williams, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s services business. ”This is the most important managed services contract we have signed in Eastern Europe and it demonstrates, as our business continues to grow, locally and internationally, our determination to continue building our managed services capabilities, and developing an even broader knowledge base.”

VIVACOM joins the partners and major service providers around the world which rely on Alcatel-Lucent for network operations, network integration, multi-vendor maintenance, network outsourcing, applications integration and IP network transformation. Other customers include AT&T, Orange, Telecom New Zealand, Bharti Airtel, BT Global Services.

About VIVACOM
VIVACOM is the trademark of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company AD (BTC), Bulgaria’s leading telecoms operator. The company offers a full range of telecom services – fixed and mobile telephony, broadband Internet and data transfer. It has the country’s largest and best-developed telecom infrastructure. VIVACOM’s converged services are available in over 1 000 outlets of the operator and its dealers throughout Bulgaria. Formoreinformation, please visit external linkwww.vivacom.bg

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare, transportation, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com



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