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Nortel and LG-Nortel: Norway's Agder Broadband Powers High-Speed Services with LG-Nortel

^{Published on 2009-06-29 01:25:01, Last Modified on 2009-06-29 01:26:20 - Market Wire}
 

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwire - June 29, 2009) - Agder Broadband, a leading broadband service provider in Norway, has deployed an LG-Nortel Ethernet Fiber Access solution, in conjunction with channel partner INS, to provide high-speed broadband services to homes in the southern region of Norway. LG-Nortel is a joint venture of LG Electronics and Nortel(i) (OTCBB:NRTLQ).

The solution will enable Agder Broadband to extend its service reach from cities and dense populated areas to smaller outlying communities in areas such as Indre Agder. The fiber based infrastructure can deliver ultra broadband speeds of up to one hundred megabits per second (100 Mbps) and will position Agder to introduce triple play services in these smaller communities. Agder's new broadband service offerings are expected to become commercially available in July 2009.

The solution addresses Agder's challenge of clearing first mile bottlenecks to enable the provision of high speed services to homes across Norway. Agder Broadband already had fiber infrastructure installed which reached distant villages across Norway. However, extending high-speed broadband services to households in these villages was not economically feasible because it meant installing new long distance fiber or building expensive and power-consuming central offices to provide dedicated fiber for each connected household.

"While we wanted to deliver high-speed broadband to a greater sector of the Norwegian population, we still needed to make a commercial return," said Toralf Nyheim, managing director, Agder Broadband AS. "Even with an existing fiber network in place we faced the classic expensive 'first-mile' problem until INS proposed an ethernet fiber access solution based on next generation WDM-PON technology."

Developed by LG-Nortel, the Ethernet Fiber Access solution helps service providers prevent bandwidth bottlenecks in the critical "first-mile" of their networks. This enables faster and more reliable delivery of data between high-speed core networks and individual user access points.

"Compared to the alternatives, WDM-PON technology represents real value for customers like Agder Broadband," said Peter MacKinnon, chairman, LG-Nortel. "WDM-PON is clearly emerging as the technology of choice for service operators' access networks, driven by an ever increasing demand for bandwidth and cost effective next generation, high availability, access infrastructure."

According to Michael Howard of Infonetics Research, "More and more service providers around the globe are looking to get greater utility from their deep-fiber access networks. WDM-PON delivers up to 10 to 20 times the capacity with a dedicated wavelength to each destination, be it to the home, building or DSLAM. Consumers want a super-fast broadband network that can download music in seconds and movies in minutes, and carriers want backhaul facilities to carry residential and business traffic. Point-to-point Ethernet WDM-PON offers a simple way to help meet the ever growing global demand for bandwidth."

The LG-Nortel Ethernet Fiber Access solution offers a simple engineering and deployment model that accelerates the deployment of fiber-to-the-home and fiber-to-the-building. The solution combines the best attributes of an Ethernet Point-to-Point system (bi-directional high bandwidth performance for business and residential customers), with the fiber efficiency and OPEX simplicity of a passive optical system. Additionally, it delivers a secure service, greater reach, simpler scalability and engineering while providing a future-proof foundational infrastructure for services.

About LG-Nortel

LG-Nortel is a joint venture of LG Electronics and Nortel. Established in 2005, LG-Nortel provides leading edge telecommunications equipment and network solutions, spanning wired and wireless technologies, to service provider and enterprise customers in Korea and around the world. LG-Nortel is also actively developing next generation solutions for global markets, with over 750 skilled R&D engineers currently focused on wireless broadband technology evolution and the development of powerful new product lines. For more information on LG-Nortel, visit [ www.lg-nortel.com ].

About Nortel

Nortel delivers communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel's technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at [ www.nortel.com ]. For the latest Nortel news, visit [ www.nortel.com/news ].

Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as "could", "expects", "may", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "targets", "envisions", "seeks" and other similar language and are considered forward-looking statements or information under applicable securities legislation. These statements are based on Nortel's current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict and the actual outcome may be materially different from those contemplated in forward-looking statements. For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel's Annual Report on Form10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

(i) Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks. LG-Nortel and the LG-Nortel logo are trademarks of LG-Nortel.