Europe : Alcatel and Istituto Geografico DeAgostini - a leading Italian publishing house, with an unrivalled expertise in cartography - have developed an advanced solution for location services, based on Assisted GPS technology.

By simply pressing a button, it will be possible to calculate the geographical position of a UMTS terminal on detailed and always updated maps, quicker and more precisely if compared with a standard GPS system. Moreover, this solution will reduce the amount of complex location calculations for the mobile terminal, and this will end up in battery savings.

This can be done thanks to the location server and the Java application EASYMAP® - to be downloaded on the mobile terminal - that are part of the solution. The location server, developed by Alcatel, elaborates navigation signals complementary to GPS, thanks to the "European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service" called EGNOS (and to Galileo in the future). It offers better coverage in urban or indoor situations.

EASYMAP®, the application developed by Istituto Geografico DeAgostini, allows an easy navigation on the map and provides all relevant features for searching for addresses, tracking routes, finding points of interest (e.g. restaurants, bars, hotels, …).

The solution is another success in the partnership between the two companies that started almost one year ago and it has been developed at the Italian 3G Reality Centre of Alcatel in Vimercate (near Milan), a technological environment open to partners and customers, dedicated to the development of mobile and convergent products and solutions.

In fact, this is the evolution for UMTS/GPS terminals of EASYMAP® application, developed for GSM terminals and launched on the market in 2004, with Alcatel One Touch™ 735i mobile phones.

"The portable phone is becoming a real mobile terminal allowing not only voice services, but also, video, data and location based services," said Jean-Michel Cornille, president of Alcatel's mobile solutions activities. "We are fully committed to the realization of a user-centric broadband world, where people can access the services from any location and using different terminals. And this is a clear example of how technologies can make everyday life easier."

About De Agostini Editore SpA
De Agostini Editore S.p.A. today is the largest Italian multinational group in the editorial sector, established in 30 countries with editions in 13 languages. Its activities are focused on the organization and the dissemination of knowledge, either via traditional means such as books, cards, video and audio tapes, or via multimedia means, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and data bases. De Agostini Editore S.p.A. has responsibilities for the coordination and the strategic management, in Italy and world-wide, of all the Group's operational activities, organized according to specialized strategic sectors and to distribution channels. School books, collections, direct marketing, general culture and professional master pieces represent the fields where De Agostini is active with the objective to position itself as the leader on the Italian and the European markets.

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 employees. Alcatel brings its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks; applications and services, to help its partners and customers build a user-centric broadband world. With sales of EURO 12.3 billion in 2004, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries.