Equant Reaches Milestone with Voice for IP VPN Service; Ninety IP VPN Customers Realize Cost Savings and Improve Business Efficiency Through Convergent Voice Solutions

Business Wire, March 17, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 17, 2003

Equant (NYSE:ENT) (Euronext Paris:EQU), an industry leader in global data and IP services for multinational businesses, announced that it now has 90 multinational Voice for IP VPN customers with more than 700 global connections.

The number of Equant IP VPN customers opting for IP voice capabilities more than doubled in 2002. During the same period, the number of call minutes that customers used increased nearly tenfold. Equant was the first service provider to launch a fully managed, global, converged voice and data service utilizing IP technology.

"Customer usage clearly confirms a shift from the early adopter phase to the early majority phase of IP convergence," said Arjen Maarleveld, Equant's president of Products.

"For more than three years, Equant Voice for IP VPN has been the IP voice service of choice for multinational companies," Maarleveld said. "By making it easy for businesses to migrate from switched voice VPN services in a cost-effective, controlled, and measured way, Equant is helping multinational corporations compete more effectively."

Launched in February 2000, Equant Voice for IP VPN runs over Equant's flagship IP VPN, which enables customers to assign priorities to applications through five differentiated classes of service. Equant customers enjoy the most IP convergence options in the market, including voice, video with a dedicated class of service, contact center integration for the wide area network and IP telephony for the local area network. Equant offers the widest coverage available today in 85 countries and strong service level agreements (SLAs).

Equant also recently became one of only a handful of service providers to receive the Cisco Powered Network (CPN) "Multiservice VPN" designation. This classification recognizes the investment Equant made to deliver convergence solutions with Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms to insure optimal handling of IP voice and/or IP video alongside data traffic.

Besides WAN convergence solutions, Equant offers customers convergence to the desktop through a fully managed LAN IP Telephony service. This provides an end-to-end solution for IP voice, with IP Telephony in the local area network, integrating a network-based IP PBX with advanced voice VPN features and extensive off-net capabilities.

Beyond a fully managed service, Equant can provide pure integration of IP Telephony systems with LAN IP PBXs. Complemented by Equant's dedicated IP Telephony Professional Services team, Equant can design, deploy and maintain cost effective IP Telephony solutions that combine with Unified Messaging for business optimization.

About Equant Voice for IP VPN

Equant led the industry as the first international service provider to launch a fully managed, global, converged voice and data service utilizing IP technology. In March 2002, Frost & Sullivan recognized the innovation involved in bringing this service to market with its 2002 Market Engineering Company of the Year Award. Equant Voice for IP VPN is distinct from other voice over IP (VoIP) solutions, which only offer voice transport or use the public Internet. Equant Voice for IP VPN provides business-level QoS over a single, converged IP-based platform -- the Equant global network.

Another distinguishing aspect of Equant Voice for IP VPN is support for private network services through the implementation of an application softswitch. Equant offers customers advanced feature functionality previously only found in circuit-switched voice VPNs. This includes managed private dial plans, Virtual On-net, Forced On-net, multiple call routing options for intelligent call handling, least cost routing for off-net traffic, call screening based on predefined lists and other features. These match the most commonly used traditional voice VPN features so users have the same capabilities as before.

In addition, Equant Voice for IP VPN offers the ability to call between corporate locations or any public telephone number in the world. This service enables a customer to dynamically integrate voice nd fax services over a new or existing data network. IP differentiated Class of Service mechanisms ensure priority treatment of voice calls and when voice channels are not in use, voice bandwidth automatically becomes available to data applications, increasing throughput and performance.

About Equant

Equant (NYSE: ENT) (Euronext Paris: EQU) is a recognized industry leader in global data and IP network and integration services for multinational businesses. The Equant network has unmatched seamless reach, connecting key business centers in 220 countries and territories, with local support in 191 countries. Building on more than 50 years of experience in data communications, Equant serves thousands of the world's top companies with the industry's most extensive portfolio of managed network services, including the market-leading IP VPN used by 750 global businesses as of March 10, 2003. Equant, a member of the France Telecom Group, was named Best Global Carrier 2002 at the World Communication Awards and consistently leads industry surveys in corporate user satisfaction.