Houston, TX and Calabasas, CA - June 24, 2002 - NextiraOne, LLC, a leading provider of network solutions and services incorporating voice, data, and converged technologies, and Alcatel announced today a joint effort to deliver communications solutions to meet the unique needs of hoteliers. The award-winning Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 IP-PBX and Omni family of convergence-optimized switches can enhance guest and administration services, help cut costs, generate income, and simplify operations.

"Hospitality clients can benefit from world-class services and customer support on an international level as a result of NextiraOne and Alcatel's combined resources," said Rick Snyder, senior vice president, professional services for NextiraOne. "With Alcatel's leading presence worldwide, and NextiraOne's proven expertise in delivering network solutions and services for hotel businesses, we are poised to provide a new level of global solutions for a truly global industry."

"Alcatel genuinely understands the hospitality industry's need for a reliable, future-proof communications system to offer the highest level of customer service," said Tom Wilburn, general manager, Alcatel North America enterprise business. "The Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 is particularly suitable for the hotel industry, providing the option of IP telephony as well as analog and digital support."

One of the key applications offered with the Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 is OmniTouch, a built-in multimedia contact center package that is easy to deploy and manage, enabling hoteliers to optimize customer interactions and improve customer service. The scalability of this cost-effective contact center solution allows hoteliers of any size to easily expand services as their needs increase. Examples of such contact center services include tracking quality of customer service, integrating with customer databases and matching caller profiles via skills-based routing.

The Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 complements its comprehensive 500+ features by inter-working with third-party hotel applications such as property management systems, call accounting and voicemail/fax services. The Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 is capable of interoperating with data switches and legacy PBXs from other vendors, offering customers flexibility in a multi-vendor environment.

With a wide range of experience in implementing voice, data and converged technologies for some of the strongest U.S. hotel operations, NextiraOne features one of the most comprehensive sets of products and one of the broadest service footprints available to the hospitality industry. This hospitality solutions portfolio will now include Alcatel's OmniPCX 4400.

To learn more about NextiraOne and see a live demonstration of Alcatel's family of communications solutions for the hospitality industry, visit NextiraOne at HITEC 2002, June 25-27 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Booth #1252.

About NextiraOne

Headquartered in Houston, TX and Paris, France, NextiraOne is a leading provider of network solutions and services. NextiraOne delivers world-class solutions and LifeCycle^SM services from planning and design, through the implementation, support, and management of voice, data, and converged communications networks. As a global service organization that carries an extensive portfolio of certifications and product expertise, NextiraOne provides best-in-class technologies from leading partners, such as Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems, and Alcatel. NextiraOne offers consultation and solutions development ranging from contact center applications to network infrastructure outsourcing. NextiraOne is owned by Platinum Equity (www.peh.com), a global organization specializing in the acquisition and strategic management of mission-critical companies. For more information, please visit www.NextiraOne.com.

About Alcatel

Alcatel (NYSE: ALA) designs, develops and builds innovative and competitive communications networks, enabling carriers, service providers and enterprises to deliver any type of content, such as voice, data and multimedia, to any type of consumer, anywhere in the world. Relying on its leading and comprehensive products and solutions portfolio, stretching from end-to-end optical infrastructures, fixed and mobile networks to broadband access, Alcatel's customers can focus on optimizing their service offerings and revenue streams. With sales of $22 billion in 2001 and 99,000 employees, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com

About the Omni family of convergence-ready network solutions

Alcatel delivers standards-based IP communications solutions to meet the needs of enterprises converging voice and data networks. Based on a robust client/server UNIX architecture, the Alcatel OmniPCX 4400 scales from 50 to 50,000 users offering a rich set of enterprise-level telephony features from a range of legacy and IP telephones as well as powerful, integrated applications, such as messaging, mobility and multi-media contact centers that can be centralized or distributed over many locations. Alcatel Omni-family of network infrastructure equipment and security appliances provide the network foundation that supports the quality of service, security, and management requirements of highly available networks.

NextiraOne Press Contacts

Shannon DeYoung, NextiraOne	Tel: (713) 307 4743	Shannon.DeYoung@NextiraOne.com
Robert Gill, rbb Public Relations	Tel: (305) 448-6167	robert.gill@rbbpr.com