Leading digital television supplier increases productivity with Alcatel’s unified collaboration solution My Teamwork and NextiraOne

NDS chooses Alcatel and NextiraOne for global communications overhaul in the UK
Paris, August 31, 2006 - Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) today announced that UK-based digital television solutions supplier NDS has deployed Alcatel’s unified communications solution My Teamwork across more than 20 sites worldwide. This overhaul of its global communications network will allow NDS to eliminate third-party conference call costs, valued at KEUR 220 per annum. It will also improve the company’s overall productivity, enabling better collaboration and greater efficiencies between 3,000 users, to help drive co-working and provide a higher standard of customer service.

NDS enables broadcasters, network TV operators and content providers to benefit from the deployment of digital TV technologies. Its customers include BSkyB, DIRECTV, SkyItalia and many others. NDS opted for Alcatel based on the functionality of My Teamwork, as well as the migration path Alcatel offered towards IP telephony. The installation, which is being carried out by NextiraOne, will enable NDS to move to a dual IP/TDM environment powered by 20 Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise communications servers.

“Very high conferencing and international call costs, between NDS sites and to our customers, meant our previous telephony system did not offer enough flexibility to make any of the cost and productivity improvements necessary to achieve our business objectives,” said Martin Smale, IT Director at NDS-UK. “Thanks to the Alcatel installation, we’re able to interact more effectively between global sites, giving us the much needed productivity boost. On top of this, we’ve been able to reduce costs immediately without compromising the security of our network.”

Alcatel My Teamwork provides real-time multimedia conferencing, secure instant messaging and application sharing for 3,000 NDS employees, while integrating fully with the Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise, to ensure ease-of-deployment across all sites. Alcatel My Teamwork is accessed via a simple web browser, with no need to download applications onto users’ PCs. NextiraOne will also be helping NDS migrate to a complete Alcatel IP telephony solution in the near future.

“Global corporations rely on conferencing technology to communicate effectively and improve productivity,” said Steven Skakel, Managing director of NextiraOne UK. “Being able to boost conferencing performance while at the same time cutting out cost makes perfect business sense.”

“Improving customer service and internal efficiency are now the key drivers behind IP telephony uptake, and consequently, Alcatel My Teamwork is proving to be a key differentiator for Alcatel when selling to organisations of all sizes,” said Graeme Allan, Country director for UK and Ireland, Alcatel enterprise activities. “Irrespective of the number of sites and users, this collaboration tool is helping companies like NDS to improve the way in which their employees communicate, both with one another and with their customers.”

About NDS
NDS Group plc (NASDAQ / Euronext Brussels: NNDS), a News Corporation company, secures and enables content anytime, anywhere on any device. See http://www.nds.com for more information about NDS.

About NextiraOne
Headquartered in Paris, NextiraOne is a leading provider of integrated enterprise network solutions and services that enable effective, reliable business communications. We work closely with our customers to create innovative solutions that go beyond technology to deliver measurable Business Value. We provide best-in-class technologies from leading partners including Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Genesys and Nortel.
Discover more at: http://www.nextiraone.co.uk
*NextiraOne and the NextiraOne logo are registered trademarks of NextiraOne LLC

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 My Teamwork
My Teamwork is a premise-based, multimedia communication solution with full-feature access from a single software-based server. Powered by SIP to the core architecture, My Teamwork supports the Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise product line and other vendors’ IP- and TDM-based telephony platforms. My Teamwork can be deployed on the customer premise for large and small businesses alike, as a managed service, or within the carrier infrastructure. As a pure software solution that runs on commodity hardware servers, My Teamwork guarantees enterprises investment protection by removing the initial and ongoing expenses associated with proprietary hardware-based products. With a software-based licensing model, upgrades and additional capacity are completed in minutes without the need for purchasing additional hardware. Furthermore due to its flexible scalability, My Teamwork meets the needs of small businesses, very large enterprises, and service providers. With thousands of enterprise users around the world at Fortune 100 and 500 companies, My Teamwork is sold both as a standalone product and as part of Alcatel’s OmniTouch Unified Communications product suite.

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Stéphane Lapeyrade

Corporate Media Relations

Alcatel

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