Europe : Orange France has launched a new high-speed mobile service which covers 85 percent of French inhabitants.

The Central and Southern France regions operate on a solution provided by Nortel. Using EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for GSM Evolution) technology which enables speeds from 100 to 200 Kilobytes per second, Orange business customers can now connect simply and easily to their company network, pick up their e-mails, surf the Internet and their Intranet, and access business applications three times faster than currently available on GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks.

EDGE technology enables 90 percent of business customers in France to access Orange's Mobile Broadband offer.

"Orange's close collaboration with Nortel enabled a cost-effective, efficient migration to EDGE," said Didier Quillot, chief executive officer, Orange France. "More importantly, due to Nortel's aggressive planning, this operation was completed swiftly to meet our launch requirements. For Orange, this service is a significant addition to the 3G services we launched at the end of 2004."

In addition to GSM and recent EDGE deployments, Nortel is the sole supplier of Orange's UMTS network in the Cote d'Azur and across central regions of France, covering urban centers including Cannes, Nice, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Toulon, Grenoble and St. Etienne. The two companies started working together in 1992 when Nortel supplied Orange France with its 2G access network for Central and Southern France.

"Due to a long list of value-added benefits with Nortel's EDGE solution, Orange France has joined other Orange properties in selecting Nortel's technology," said Christine Landrevot, president, Orange global account, Nortel. "Besides Orange France, we have also successfully deployed EDGE solutions with Orange Slovensko and PTK Centertel in Poland. Through our close relationship with Orange, we were able to complete this latest large-scale deployment in less than seven months."

Nortel EDGE technology allows GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) operators to offer high-speed data services to end users, serve more mobile customers, and increase GSM network capacity to accommodate additional voice traffic. Nortel's EDGE offering includes a superior power amplifier solution that improves performance and allows an upgrade to EDGE to be accomplished without network redesign. The Nortel EDGE technology also provides a larger coverage area with the same quality of service compared to other industry products.

Nortel has designed, installed and launched more than 300 wireless networks in over 70 countries. Nortel was the industry's first supplier with wireless networks operating in all advanced radio technologies (GSM/GPRS/EDGE, CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO, UMTS and WLAN), and is the only end-to-end provider of all new-generation wireless solutions.