Alcatel Invests $15 Million in General Bandwidth
AUSTIN, April 26th, 2004 – General Bandwidth Inc., of Austin, Texas, today announced that Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) has invested U.S. $15 million in General Bandwidth. The investment further strengthens the three-year OEM relationship between the two companies and allows for additional development enhancements to their joint Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and VoIP offerings.
In December 2003, SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE: SBC) announced a four-year primary supplier agreement with Alcatel for SBC's FTTP initiative. As part of that supplier agreement, General Bandwidth provides the packetized voice technology to Alcatel for the SBC deployments.
"Alcatel has a long-standing relationship with General Bandwidth and this investment further aligns our mutual goals," stated Mike Dobbs, Alcatel's Senior Vice President, Access Networks for North America.
"This investment is yet another validation of the FTTP opportunity, and Alcatel and General Bandwidth are well-positioned to provide the best possible solution for service providers and their subscribers," said Brendon Mills, CEO and President of General Bandwidth. "In addition, the investment also helps to fuel General Bandwidth's continuing development of VoIP products and services."
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 to their employees. Alcatel leverages its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services to bring value to its customers in the framework of a broadband world. With sales of EURO 12.5 billion in 2003, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. www.alcatel.com
About General Bandwidth
General Bandwidth provides “Solutions for a VoIP World” with deployments across more than 36 domestic and international customers enabling applications such as IP Centrex, VoIP business services, and PacketCable™ cable telephony. General Bandwidth's flagship product, the G6 ® VoIP Media Gateway, delivers high quality, full-featured voice services over a wide variety of packet architectures, including T1, DSL, hybrid fiber coax (HFC), and FTTP. With the capability to simultaneously support voice services from next generation softswitches and Class 5 switches, the G6 platform is a highly scalable, fully redundant, and very flexible service platform from which new voice and media features can be deployed. www.genband.com.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Certain statements in this press release constitute forward-looking statements. The words “will,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “expect,” “intend,” “believe” and similar expressions referring to the future or events to occur in the future are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Statements regarding projections, strategies or anticipated benefits arising from the investment also constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements reflect Alcatel's current views with respect to future events and are based on information currently available to Alcatel. These statements are not guarantees of true results, performance or achievement and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those matters specifically discussed herein, general economic conditions, conditions in the telecommunications industry, and matters discussed in Alcatel's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These and other factors may cause Alcatel's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Alcatel does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release.
Media Relations contacts:
Alcatel
Brian Murphy
+1.972.519.6677
brian.murphy@alcatel.com
General Bandwidth
Tabitha Bailey
+1.805.241.2532
Tabitha.bailey@genband.com
