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Alcatel Enterprise Data and Voice Solutions Power Florida Electric Utility

Posted on: Wednesday, 13 October 2004, 06:00 CDT

CALABASAS, Calif., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alcatel today announced that The City of Ocala Electric Utility in Florida has selected Alcatel for an OmniSwitch data network that serves over 48,000 city residents and an OmniPCX Enterprise voice network that provides voice communications for over 1000 of its city staff members.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20031111/ALALOGO)

The City of Ocala Electric Utility's OmniSwitch-powered private Metropolitan Area Network provides reliable, secure connectivity for life-saving, community-enhancing services from local hospitals, the county sheriff, city police, and clerk of courts. It chose the OmniSwitch for its focus on providing high availability for mission critical networks and because Alcatel's operating system made it simple to learn, deploy, and manage new switches and attain immediate cost of ownership benefits. It also cited Alcatel's VLANs (virtual local area networks) as a key factor in their OmniSwitch selection because they allow the electric utility to secure government communications with ease and precision.

"Alcatel's OmniSwitch family gives us the confidence we can fulfill our customers requirements for non-stop networking," said Arnie Hersh, Network Designer, City of Ocala Electric Utility. "Availability features like smart continuous switching and configuration rollback, along standards based protocols like OSPF, protect our network against everything from hardware failure to human error. This focus on network availability perfectly complements our mission to provide residents with non-stop city services."

The City of Ocala Electric Utility also uses Alcatel's OmniPCX Enterprise for voice communications for city employees. In a migration away from an existing voice network, it selected the OmniPCX because it felt Alcatel's IP-centric vision was in line with its future requirements. The eventual migration to IP is now operational in areas of the network where moves, adds, and changes occur - making them much easier to manage.

SIP is in the Utility's future as well. "If there was a data infrastructure built to enable the uptime needed to deploy IP Telephony and SIP applications, it is Alcatel's," said Arnie Hersh, Network Designer. "Alcatel is global player that really understands the relationship between the data infrastructure, voice communications, and the applications. This is what sets them apart from any vendor on the market today."

"The City of Ocala Electric Utility is an excellent example of how Alcatel's solutions meet the requirements of next-generation enterprises," said Tom Burns, Senior VP and GM, Alcatel's Network Infrastructure Business. "Customers looking for a vendor with expertise in voice applications and network infrastructure will find that Alcatel's enterprise solution set is hard to match."

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 12.5 billion in 2003, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com/

For further information, please contact Ed Essa of Alcatel, +1-818-878-5472, ed.essa@ind.alcatel.com.

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20031111/ALALOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com

Alcatel

CONTACT: Ed Essa of Alcatel, +1-818-878-5472, ed.essa@ind.alcatel.com

Web site: http://www.alcatel.com/

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