Europe : Ericsson now enables Scandinavian operator 3 to meet the demands of its customers by offering richer voice, text, picture, video
messaging, email and unified messaging. The messaging solution is integrated, hosted and managed by Ericsson, which takes overall responsibility for the services under a managed services agreement.

The five-year contract, which covers Sweden, Denmark, Norway and optionally Finland, further strengthens Ericsson's position as a business and managed services partner in the service layer and an industry leader in innovative messaging solutions.

In December 2004, 3 announced it had 350,000 customers in Scandinavia. It will now benefit from the enhanced possibilities via this agreement with Ericsson.

"3 offers attractive and innovative mobile communication services to our customers," said Shlomo Liran, CEO at 3. "Ericsson's hosted solution supports all our needs for delivering attractive messaging solutions to customers. This is a fast, cost-efficient and easy way for launching premium picture and video messaging services to our customers, allowing us to focus on further developing our business in
other areas."

Under the agreement, Ericsson's market leading and well-proven solutions for voice mail, SMS, MMS, unified messaging, Email and Video Gateway are integrated into 3's network. The arrangement is seamless for consumers. Ericsson will take the overall responsibility for the day-to-day operation and maintenance of the solutions.

"The agreement with a pioneering operator such as 3 underlines Ericsson's position as the industry leader in managed services and in providing innovative messaging solutions," said Hans Vestberg, Executive Vice President, Business Unit Global Services, Ericsson. "We are very proud of the trust 3 has shown by placing this great responsibility in our hands."

Ericsson's messaging solutions have been adopted by more than 110 mobile operators in more than 90 countries, serving an addressable subscriber base of more than 400 million consumers.

Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the
world.