PARIS, 8 August 2006 — Alcatel has been awarded a 30 million euro contract with Iraqi Telecommunications and Post Corporation (ITPC), the sole fixed operator in Iraq, to deliver a turnkey high-capacity nationwide microwave backbone. The World Bank will finance the contract.

With this turnkey solution, ITPC will be able to handle the ever-growing national traffic caused by continuous increasing demands in the capital and in the country. The network will allow ITPC to provide fixed, mobile and data services very quickly according to the Telco activity development the operator wants to promote. Alcatel will provide a backbone covering 62 sites along three important routes in the country.

Under the terms of this contract, Alcatel will supply its Alcatel 9600 LSY high-capacity long-haul digital microwave radio transmission backbone along with Optical Multi-Service Node (OMSN) systems, PDH multiplex and cross connect, complemented by a powerful end-to-end network management, power supply equipment and towers providing efficient control and routing throughout the network. The robustness, reliability and scalability of the Alcatel 9600 LSY solution make it the preferred choice for fixed and mobile operators

“We are confident that our long-term partner will deliver such unique network backbone in the agreed time frames in order to have it fully operational by the beginning of 2008. We have an urge to reconstruct the network in Iraq and we are convinced that Alcatel is the right partner for that,” said Mohamed S. Mohamed El-Hamadany, Iraq’s deputy minister of communications.

Vincenzo Nesci, VP of Alcatel’s activities in the Middle East, responded, “Taking advantage of our deep knowledge of the Iraqi telecommunications services, we are convinced that this cutting-edge network will contribute to help Iraq to accelerate the reconstruction of their country. This award is a proof of the Alcatel’s commitment to provide communication access to the ‘next billion’ people around the world. It will as well reinforce our position in Iraq and in the region in which we have been present for more than 35 years.”

With more than 400,000 point-to-point microwave radios installed in more than 150 countries, Alcatel is a technology leader and top player in the wireless transmission market.

For the present, Wireless Interactive has completed its newest network in Iraq utilizing the Orion-900, 900MHz radios as a network of wireless backbone infrastructure which then is redistributed using the RedFire-200, 2.4GHz Wi-Fi product line.

“Satellite is Iraq’s only source for incoming and outgoing Internet traffic, linking the country to the rest of the world. However, this traffic must be redistributed using other means. Given the lack of wired infrastructure, wireless is the only option,” stated Mohammed Omed Ali, CEO of Impulse for Communication and IT. “We have had tremendous success in the past with the RedFire product line. Due to Wi-Fi congestion, it has been difficult to get to hard-to-reach places. The Orion-900 has filled this void. It allows us to extend our customer reach to twice that of the RedFire, to remote locations. We then utilize the RedFire to provide Wi-Fi coverage to the public. What is special about the Orion-900 is that each installation does not have to stop there. The same unit can act as a repeater in order to extend our network reach even further in the future.”

The Orion-900 product line was specifically designed for point to multipoint, backhaul applications. Traditionally, backhaul applications were point to point only due to bandwidth restrictions. The high power (up to 1W) Orion-900 can transmit up to 22Mbps of effective throughput compared to 1-3Mbps the competition has to offer. In addition, it is one of the world’s first OFDM radios within the 900MHz spectrum. It is a cost-efficient way to extend large amounts of data into remote locations, while then redistributing that data via some other less expensive method such as Wi-Fi.

“With the Orion-900 radio, we have been able to extend our reach even further into Iraq than ever before,” said Michael Avramidis, president, Wireless Interactive Comm. Inc. “With this major accomplishment behind us, we can concentrate on providing Internet connectivity to thousands of Iraqi civilians. Our close partner and friends in Iraq have done a magnificent job in integrating our solutions with their expertise in satellite. In order to take the Orion one step further in Iraq, on the drawing board is our next-generation radio of a much lower frequency, Pegasus.”