March, 18, 2010 - Alcatel-Lucent today unveiled a set of capabilities designed to help mobile service providers address the explosion in mobile data services on today’s 3G networks, and the anticipated increase in data requirements with the emergence of Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband.

The company announced significant upgrades to its mobile packet core solution along with a comprehensive and unique approach to IP network and policy management that will bring the IP capabilities of 4G networks to today’s 3G subscribers.

With the advent of smart phones and bandwidth hungry applications such as real-time video – which together are generating unprecedented growth in mobile data traffic -- service providers are faced with a variety of simultaneous, and often conflicting challenges including: increasing network capacity while reducing the cost per bit of supporting data services; enabling new business models beyond today’s ‘all you can eat’ offerings; and transforming their networks to take advantage of the benefits of the shift to all-IP networks, which offer simplified operational models and reduced complexity.

“As mobile data traffic continues to grow, every part of the network is being strained,” said Peter Jarich, Service Director with Current Analysis and author of the company’s most recent mobile packet core analysis: “Mobile Packet Core: Engine of Mobile Broadband Success.” “While we applauded Alcatel-Lucent’s entry into the EPC space last year, we encouraged the company to expand its solution into 2G/3G operations to better serve their mobile broadband customers and best leverage their expertise in the RAN, IP core and vendor services spaces. The new solution expansion does just that. More importantly, positioning its gateways alongside policy and analytics tools helps to deliver a fuller mobile packet core solution – and helps operators with the service differentiation they’re all chasing.”

The new products and enhancements announced today deliver best-in-class capabilities at every point in the network, including the 3G and LTE mobile packet core. Service providers will now be able to deliver bandwidth-hungry, enriched and personalized services with enhanced subscriber quality of experience - all with reduced provisioning, operating and maintenance costs across all parts of the network, from the radio access network (RAN) to the backhaul elements and into the packet core.

These developments are an important contributor to the realization of Alcatel-Lucent’s High Leverage NetworkTM strategy - a fully converged, scalable, next generation, all-IP multiservice infrastructure that enables operators to deliver traffic more reliably, efficiently and at the lowest cost, while also leveraging the network to generate revenue from sophisticated managed services and applications.

“Our High Leverage NetworkTM strategy has enabled service providers to deliver large-scale, real-time, residential triple play services (Internet, Voice and IPTV) over the past five years and now we’re bringing that strategy to mobile operators as they deal with tremendous growth in data and video applications. Our packet core platforms deliver unmatched scale and performance to address the capacity crunch, our network intelligence and policy management solution enables operators to deliver personalized services with the appropriate subscriber quality of experience and we provide end-to-end management across the ‘all IP’ wireless network to reduce time to market and operational costs,” said Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP activities and head of carrier strategy. “We have best of breed products across our wireless portfolio, but have also invested significantly in integrating it all together in an end-to-end solution to enable wireless operators to deliver innovative 3G and LTE services and create competitive differentiation in the market.”

To address the data capacity issues in wireless networks today and tomorrow, Alcatel-Lucent’s Ultimate Wireless Packet Coreoffering includes the following new capabilities:

• 2G and 3G GGSN (Gateway GPRS Support Node) functionality on Alcatel-Lucent’s 7750 Service Router-based mobile packet core gateways. Alcatel-Lucent’s 4G mobile packet core gateway platform now supports GGSN for 2.5G and 3G as well as Serving Gateway and Packet Data Network Gateway for LTE, giving service providers a seamless and massively scalable solution for GPRS/EDGE, HSPA, HSPA+ and LTE. The 7750 SR delivers more than ten times the performance and scale of typical 3G packet core gateways and has been in global LTE trials since 2009 and will be available for commercial delivery of 2G, 3G and LTE services in the second half of 2010.
• The new Alcatel-Lucent Wireless Mobility Manager (WMM), a high-performance and scalable solution for 2.5G/3G SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node) and LTE MME (Mobility Management Entity) on an in-house designed and optimized, common ATCAv2 platform. This combined functionality enables operators to expand or renovate their existing packet cores to support HSPA and HSPA+ today while having the signaling and control plane performance required of an MME when they migrate to LTE.

To address the need for smarter bandwidth, enabling mobile operators to improve network efficiency and monetization, Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end wireless network and policy management offering now includes:

• The new Alcatel-Lucent 5780 Dynamic Services Controller (DSC), which provides the 3G and LTE PCRF (Policy Charging and Rules Function), enabling mobile operators to optimize and monetize network resources, while offering personalized choice for the subscriber in both a 3G and LTE environment. The Alcatel-Lucent 5780 DSC also provides the foundation for converged wireline/wireless policy management to enable any application on any screen, anywhere. The 5780 DSC is currently in global trials and will be available for commercial 3G and LTE service delivery in the second half of 2010.
• Enhancements to the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) to include support for the Ultimate Wireless Packet Core and 5780 DSC, including unified, end-to-end management of user (data) and control planes across mobile backhaul and packet core. The 5620 SAM, deployed by more than 270 service providers to date, provides automated configuration and fault/performance management tools that decrease time to market for new mobile services and minimize downtime when problems occur.
• The Alcatel-Lucent 9900 Wireless Network Guardian (WNG) provides mobile operators with unprecedented and real-time visibility into the relationship between network element performance and end-user quality of experience (QoE) across the entire wireless data network. Selected most recently by a large North American wireless operator, the 9900 WNG enables dynamic self-optimization and mobile customer care solutions for multi-technology/multi-vendor networks and is a critical element of Alcatel-Lucent’s wireless offering.