Alcatel-Lucent becomes Synterra’s strategic partner to deploy Russia’s first commercial Universal WiMAX networks

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Synterra, a national telecommunications service provider, today announced a strategic partnership to deploy Russia’s first Universal WiMAX networks. This project will be conducted in cooperation with regional telecom operators to provide WiMAX access throughout the country. Deployments will cover many towns and cities with an average population of 100,000 inhabitants. First regional WiMAX networks should be operational in Q4 2007. Synterra – which holds a national license – intends to partner with operators in order to cover more than 1,000 Russian cities and towns by end of 2008.

Alcatel–Lucent was the winner of the tender announced by Synterra in May, for the delivery of WiMAX infrastructure – based on the latest IEEE 802.16e-2005 standards (also called Rev-e). The new networks will be deployed by regional operators in the 2.5 GHz spectrum band.

“Synterra is pioneering the introduction of WiMAX services in Russia, and is the first company to deploy the large-scale project in cooperation with regional service providers. Thanks to Alcatel-Lucent’s most advanced WiMAX solution our service provider partners will soon be able to offer a wide range of useful and cutting-edge broadband services to their subscribers in urban and rural environments,” said Vitaly Slizen, General Director of Synterra. “We selected Alcatel-Lucent as our strategic partner because its solution is available now and it is flexible, easy-to-deploy and scalable, which will help our partners to bring these services to market more quickly. We see Universal WiMAX as a key technology to support our plan to expand broadband coverage throughout Russia.”

“This new project with innovative service provider Synterra is a tangible sign of the technological and economic benefits of Universal WiMAX in high-growth markets such as Russia, and represents a major step toward the deployment of high-capability wireless broadband solution in the market,” said Johan Vanderplaetse, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities in the CIS.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Universal WiMAX solution is designed to enable rapid implementation of voice over IP (VoIP) and broadband services such as mobile data, video streaming and virtual private network (VPN) access in fixed, nomadic and mobile environments. WiMAX is a flexible technology that enables people to access high-speed, high-quality broadband wireless services wherever they are and wherever they go, providing truly “universal” wireless broadband access.

Alcatel-Lucent’s solution supports a wide range of terminals from various customer premises equipment (CPE) partners. This is part of Alcatel-Lucent’s Open CPE policy, which is designed to promote an open device ecosystem and ensure customers have the widest possible range of interoperable end-user devices. Alcatel-Lucent’s Universal WiMAX solution integrates the latest technological innovations, including “beam forming” (*) which enables a service provider to dramatically reduce the number of radio sites needed to provide coverage – in some instances by as much as 40 percent – while reducing interference and ensuring better indoor penetration of the radio signal.

With 70 WiMAX trials and deployments worldwide and 11 commercial contracts, Alcatel-Lucent is among the world’s leading WiMAX vendors.