Software upgrades can offer exceptional power and cost savings for mobile operators worldwide

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, February 17, 2009 – Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext and NYSE: ALU) today announced a significant enhancement to its GSM/EDGE mobile networking portfolio that can reduce power consumption by up to 27 percent, offering dramatic energy and cost savings for mobile operators. The power reductions were demonstrated during January field trial this year with China Mobile in the country’s Jiangsu province. On average, a 24 percent power saving has been achieved.

This new feature, called Dynamic Power Save (DPS), is for Alcatel-Lucent’s GSM/EDGE base stations. It does not impact the quality of service provided to subscribers, not just at night, but also during high-traffic periods. Because this is a software upgrade, this enhancement can be installed on all Alcatel-Lucent multi-standard base stations deployed since 1999, some 500,000 stations.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Dynamic Power Save capability involves switching off the power amplifier in GSM transceivers. It enables the base station to monitor traffic activity on the network and when there is no information to transmit, even for very short periods of time, the amplifier is switched off. This process offers substantial cost savings at night when calling volumes are naturally lower, but also, because of the sensitivity of the monitoring techniques, considerable power savings are available during busy times as well. These saving are obtained without any increases in call blocking or reductions in packet data throughput so the service quality remains high.

“Alcatel-Lucent is committed to developing innovative technologies that help our customers reduce their carbon footprint while offering consistently reliable and top-quality services to their subscribers,” said Benoit de Corn, who leads Alcatel-Lucent’s GSM/EDGE activities. “No other wireless equipment vendor in the industry can boast such an impressive power consumption profile, particularly since we can apply these power savings to our entire embedded base of customers, going back to 1999.”  

With more than 500,000 multi-standard base stations deployed today, Alcatel-Lucent’s DPS technology can offer enormous power and cost savings to many of the world’s mobile operators.

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As a responsible corporate citizen and leader in the telecoms industry, Alcatel-Lucent works to enrich people's lives—by transforming the way the world communicates and connects, and by acting in full recognition of its social and environmental responsibilities as a company. Alcatel-Lucent also recognises the important role the telecommunications sector must play in the global effort to address environmental issues such as climate change. It is devoted to be an active community player and to involve suppliers and business partners in its sustainability approach.