Alcatel’s Automated Message Delivery System helps Citigroup deliver critical investment information faster

Paris, November 14, 2006 - Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA AND NYSE: ALA) today announced the deployment by Citigroup of its Automated Message Deliver System (AMDS), a new generation of SIP, premise-based broadcast voice messaging solutions, providing an alternative to expensive, proprietary, hardware products and costly outbound dialer services. AMDS is a browser-based interface, delivered on Alcatel’s Advanced Communications Server (ACS) platform, the same server supporting the award-winning My Teamwork unified conferencing and collaboration solution.

Citigroup, one of the world’s pre-eminent financial services companies, with some 200 million customer accounts in more than 100 countries, uses AMDS within its Global Equities Division to send on average 5,000 messages nightly. Currently 1,500 research and sales analysts in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific use the solution to manage and distribute investment information both internally and externally. Citigroup sales traders use AMDS to manage their daily client investment updates, reducing their call time in half. The solution, embedded in Citibank’s CRM interface, replaces 3rd party broadcast voicemail and saves money by enabling Citigroup to manage its broadcast messaging activity in-house with full compliance and reporting mechanisms.

" Sales is a highly voicemail-driven business in the investment banking world, making AMDS invaluable for Citigroup staff," said Dan Hollins, Assistant Vice President and Business Analyst, in Citigroup’s Global Equities Division. "For Citigroup, the cost savings is significant but the real business benefit of this product is an increase in productivity and time to market-being able to reach more clients faster."

" AMDS demonstrates Alcatel’s ongoing leadership role in the global telephony market where Alcatel consistently delivers innovative software applications that provide solutions to real customer issues. " said Jean-Christophe Giroux, President of Alcatel enterprise solutions activities. "AMDS addresses a need for enterprises, professional services, and government agencies to communicate critical information to customers and citizens in a cost-effective, timely manner. AMDS is a cost effective, simple to deploy and tangible value-added solution that delivers immediate results for our customers."

Alcatel’s AMDS uses industry-standard platforms resulting in a low cost entry point with secure access to voice broadcast management from any PC, inside or outside the firewall. With carrier-grade availability and scalability, AMDS can deliver thousands of voice messages daily for attended or unattended delivery of broadcasts. Maintenance costs are also minimized as enhancements and scalability-from several to thousands of ports-is handled via software upgrades and licensing.

AMDS is available as a standalone product with connectivity to any PBX or PSTN using TDM and/or SIP telephony interfaces. Software license pricing and packaging ensures the ability to easily scale the system based on the dynamics of individual business needs as message volume increases. Administration and management simplicity is further demonstrated by the use of a browser based client ensuring "zero foot print" deployment. Additionally, the platform software XML APIs enable the ability to integrate to existing customer enterprise applications and create customized functionality when required.

About AMDS solution

For organizations such as school districts; federal, state, and local governments; and financial institutions, AMDS offers an efficient mass communication method to provide clients and the community with critical and timely information alerts, event notifications, and alarms. For the enterprise environment, AMDS helps communicate product and support announcements and marketing messages to new and existing customers. With its ease of use and access, AMDS enables enterprises and institutions to quickly distribute information to the masses.

About Alcatel