Alcatel-Lucent launches Mobilefriends in France; creating and monetizing communities through mobile services

Paris - Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced the launch of Mobilefriends in the French market. Mobilefriends is a turnkey mobile service that enables users to easily create and monetize connected communities using SMS. The major characteristics of the Mobilefriends service is the user friendliness, the ability to deliver real-time communications, and the ability to connect people using any type of mobile terminal without any technical or financial investment.

The Mobilefriends service targets social communities of any size – be they hike organizers, school or soccer clubs, traditional media, community web sites, etc. Companies and major brands can also leverage the same platform to address their employee communities or manage their marketing campaigns.

Available today, in just a few clicks one can create a service on external linkwww.mobilefriends.fr. The social community leader has access to online tools to promote services to the community members who instantly receive the message as soon as the leader posts it from the Internet or from a mobile phone. Members pay 20, 30 or 50 Euro cents per SMS and the generated revenues are distributed among the participants including the mobile operator.

This service today launched in France is a continuation of a successful service offered by Alcatel-Lucent in Switzerland through its subsidiary MNC (Mobile News Channel). This Swiss service already includes more than 500 B2B (Business to Business) customers and 10,000 communities covering communities around the media, sports, banking and Internet areas - positioning MNC as leader in the field of managing SMS subscription services.

Alcatel-Lucent brings extensive, field proven expertise to this service – particularly in managing multi-operator environments, financial flows, secured payments, security and privacy, voluntary or stop subscription mechanisms – all while ensuring simplicity for consumers, companies and content providers.

“The services market is changing; consumers become more and more involved and dynamic. They are ready to pay for a service which will help save time, bring a new experience or the feeling of being important and having fun. Mobile service providers are also looking for new models to monetize their content,” said Jean-Philippe Poirault, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s Integration Services Division and president of MNC.

In France, the Mobilefriends launch is off to a strong start with communities already developed for Football.fr (Lagardère group) the leading site of football fans in France and Sportunit, winner of the 2009 Sporsora trophy (innovation category). Météo France has also signed a partnership with MNC to offer the French media a weather subscription service via SMS.

About MNC
MNC (Mobile News Channel SA), a 100% subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, is a market leading ASP (Application Service Provider) for mobile services and enjoys an unequalled reputation in operational excellence. Our ready-to-launch services enable all companies, from mobile operators to individuals to build free or paid mobile services (external linkSMS, MMS, and WAP) and monetize their assets, communities, targeted audience, etc, by facilitating interaction and transaction between different actors, mobile operators, end users, merchants, institutions, etc,. The core advantages of MNC solutions reside on mobile external linkmarketing (promotion and sale of tangible and intangible goods) and external linkmobile payment solution (payment & credit cards). MNC operates in Europe, the United States and Africa. For more information, please visit our website: external linkhttp://www.mnc-services.com.

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