Los Angeles Unified School District selects Alcatel as part of modernization project

Paris, November 17, 2005 – Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA AND NYSE: ALA) today announced that the Los Angeles School District (LAUSD), the nation’s second largest school district, has selected Alcatel’s OmniSwitch solutions to modernize its network, as well as increase speed and capacity. Together with Spectrum Communications, an Alcatel business partner, the two companies developed a solution that meets the district’s requirements for reliability and technological flexibility, while accommodating the expansive district that covers an area of 704 square miles.

LAUSD has limited physical space available yet has a large need for modernizing its communications to support the day-to-day operational functions of a K-12 student enrollment of over 740,000. To bring the district’s schools and administration services up-to-date, Spectrum and Alcatel identified the Alcatel OmniSwitch 7800, 7700 and 6602 products as the solution.

“The LAUSD wanted to establish a procurement vehicle it could use over a 36-month period to purchase LAN equipment,” explains Dan Rivera, director of network estimation for Spectrum. “We needed to find a product solution that met LAUSD’s technical requirements and had a lot of flexibility in its design. Alcatel’s OmniSwitch products deliver that and more for core and edge LAN switching.”

The OmniSwitch 7800 and 7700 are multi-layer core switches designed for continuous operation featuring advanced QoS capabilities and in-line power distribution for IP phones, while providing the highest network security, performance and availability for IP communications. The OmniSwitch 6600 switch family is comprised of stackable layer-3 workgroup switches that provide wire-rate layer-two plus switching, layer-3 routing and advanced services with power over Ethernet capabilities for edge deployments and branch offices in converged environments.

“Alcatel continues to deliver reliable and cost-effective networking solutions to the K-12 education market, and by working closely with our business partners to meet the school district’s requirements, our products provide a solid solution with performance and cost that fit those needs,” said Tom Burns, vice president and general manager of Alcatel’s data networking business.

Having worked in the education market for the past 20 years, Spectrum, the systems integrator on this project, was awarded a three-year multi-vendor contract that will run through July 2008. Their experience, including having worked with LAUSD over the past nine years, has placed Spectrum as an approved education contractor and pre-qualified vendor for LAUSD’s procurement services group, which has potential to offer additional contracts to other agencies within LAUSD, and potentially other districts throughout Southern California.

As a leading provider of network infrastructure products for the education market, Alcatel is providing a cost-effective, corporate-like core solution for the district that will increase network speeds and accommodate the large range of staff and users.

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 12.3 billion and 56,000 employees in 2004, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries.

Contact Information

Charlie Guyer

Alcatel

Contact via E-mail