NEW GENERATION TELECOM NETWORKS: ITALTEL HAS 13% OF WORLD MARKET

This is according to Infonetics Research, an American market research firm of the telecommunications sector. Italtel is a player in a worldwide market that will be worth 2.1 billion dollars in 2006

Italtel, international player in the integration of voice/data/images on telecommunications networks, obtained 13% of the worldwide volume of lines sold in the softswitch market segment in the third quarter of 2002, according the data released by Infonetics Research, one of the most authoritative market research firms in America.

The information confirms Italtels positioning in a sector which is currently associated with the most advanced frontier in the development of telecom networks.
Estimates predict that business will reach 2.1 billion US dollars in 2006, resulting from the investments made mainly in the EMEA area and in Asia.

VoIP is definitely the vision of carriers around the world," said Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst of Service Provider Networks and Next Gen Voice with Infonetics Research.

We are in the early stages of a transition that will take over ten years and Italtel is helping carriers achieve that vision."

Infonetics numbers - explains Patrizia Grieco, Italtels chief operating officer -- reflect the hard work carried out by the company, together with its partner Cisco Systems, over the last two years, with the goal of becoming one of the international vendors of reference for telecom operators, committed to innovation and the evolution of their infrastructures.

The result shows that we were right - adds Grieco -- and not only reflects the relevant results obtained in the domestic market in Italy but the prospects that are taking shape in the EMEA area, where we want keep on growing".

In acknowledgement of the strategy, Italtel has recently changed the front line structure for the market, which is now operative through three business units -- 'products (Claudio Chiarenza and Franco Serio), 'network integration (Riccardo Caldarella), 'professional services (Valerio Minero) -- and the 'sales operations area (Antonio Cassese) which Giuseppe Della Rosa has recently joined as domestic market manager.

According to the report, Europe and Asia are two very strong regions for current and future softswitch market.