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Market-Ready Mobile WiMAX To Deliver UK Wireless Broadband

Cross-market collaboration launches to demonstrate the viability of mobile WiMAX ahead of 2008 spectrum auction

LONDON – Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] and Urban Wimax have launched a ‘cross-market collaboration’ to prove the technical deliverability of 4G mobile WiMAX in mature 3G markets such as Western Europe, ahead of the UK’s spectrum auction in early 2008.

The collaboration, through which companies will be brought together to construct and trial a user-ready WiMAX service, will demonstrate that the technology and a proven delivery chain are in place to provide the UK with a robust ‘4G’ service using WiMAX connectivity.

4G WiMAX has a greater range than WiFi, and is capable of providing higher bandwidth at less than half the cost of existing wireless services. For service providers this translates into the ability to meet increasing consumer demand for broadband on the go. WiMAX provides reliable, secure and high quality broadband for mobile internet users, supporting the increasingly bandwidth-heavy applications and User Generated Content (UGC) services that consumers want on the move as well as on the desktop. Wireless broadband also boosts the capability and efficiency of mobile workers increasing the competitive edge of businesses by enabling users to access enterprise services on their mobile devices.

Gerry Collins, director, wireless EMEA at Nortel, said: "Creating a true wireless broadband experience on the move is essential to making Hyperconnectivity a reality in the UK. This leap forward in mobile connectivity supports a new generation of rich multimedia applications and social media services; and supports business users on the move with fast download and upload speeds for mobile working. Nortel’s investment in WiMAX and our role in this collaboration reinforces our commitment to driving the deployment of advanced broadband services across the country."

Sasha Williamson, CEO of Urban Wimax, said: "The potential for 4G using WiMAX connectivity is enormous. If the UK is to remain competitive in the digital economy it must improve broadband connectivity, both in terms of penetration and bandwidth. 4G WiMAX is the most economical way of achieving this and, with the 2.5/2.69GHz spectrum becoming available next year, the collaboration will be in prime position to deliver a premier wireless broadband service to business and consumer users in the UK. We are pleased to see support from major players in the industry, and look forward to enhancing and trialing the supply chain ahead of the auction in 2008."

Increasing broadband bandwidth and penetration is critical to ensuring the UK’s competitiveness in global markets. With broadband penetration accelerating in the tiger economies of China and India, Nortel and Urban Wimax believe that 2.5/2.69GHz WiMAX spectrum auction by Ofcom provides the UK with a vital opportunity to stay abreast of the competition with 4G roll-out. The initial focus of the collaboration is to pre-assemble and test an end-to-end WIMAX supply chain with trial customers; and explore the business case for a national wholesale and retail mobile WIMAX network.

The collaboration co-founded by Nortel and Urban Wimax, which builds on Nortel’s existing global WiMAX ecosystem, has already been joined by Macropolitan, reflecting the importance placed by all three companies on delivering all the 4G capabilities required to enable a rapid network build-out in the UK. Macropolitan provides rapid access to urban sites for operators that reduces time to market for these WiMAX services.

Ryan Jarvis, CEO of Macropolitan, said: "Macropolitan is pleased to join the collaboration with Nortel and Urban Wimax, adding our support and portfolio of over 9,300 urban telecoms sites to the group in its efforts to prove WiMAX deliverability ahead of the auction. Over the next six months we expect to see a growing interest in WiMAX and so we are backing this major customer-driven initiative. We believe other potential bidders will join this collaboration as they see the benefits of an ecosystem that can actually deliver on the promise of secure and reliable portable broadband to business and consumer users."

NOTES

About the cross-market collaboration

Nortel and Urban Wimax are the founding members of a ‘cross-market collaboration’ that will bring together companies from across the telecoms and media industries that provide all components for full delivery of a commercially viable WiMAX service. The purpose of the collaboration is to pre-assemble and test an end-to-end WIMAX technology supply chain and carry out user trials on the network. Ahead of Ofcom’s auction of the 2.5/2.69GHz spectrum, the collaboration also seeks to explore the business case for a national wholesale and retail mobile WIMAX networks against a range of innovative new value chain business models.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering 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. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news

About Urban Wimax

Urban Wimax provides businesses with secure, cost effective, high quality connections for data, voice and video. The company has developed WiVO (Wimax Virtual Opertor) software and has the global IPR, which means it is able to deliver ubiquitous, scalable non-line of sight WiMAX services in dense urban markets, with the widest addressable market in a low capex and opex modular fashion.

Founded in 2004 by CEO Sasha Williamson, Urban Wimax is exploiting the standards-based wide area network technology, WiMAX. The company is offering competitive symmetric voice and data services in the currently un-served 2 – 10Mb range to businesses in London.

Urban Wimax has the backing of investors and industry needed to gain rapid market share, The company is based in London, UK.

About WiMAX

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a new standards-based wireless technology designed to deliver carrier-class wireless wide area network (WWAN) services.

The WiMAX standard (IEEE 802.16d 2004) is a complimentary technology to the 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) standard, referred to as WiFi and now commonly used in public wireless hotspots and in home/office networks. WiMAX offers significantly greater service ranges than WiFi (from 2 – 10 miles) at up to 10Mb speeds.

Urban Wimax is the first company in the UK to deploy a networks using the WiMAX 802.16d 2004 standard.

About Macropolitan

Macropolitan is the largest owner of exclusive telecoms rights at urban sites in the UK with over 35 property owner partners including Travelodge, Premier Travel Inn, David Lloyd Leisure and Fitness First. Macropolitan aggregates, rents and manages access to this portfolio of 9,300 sites to telecom operators and their site deployment partners. Macropolitan’s unique site portfolio enables operators to deploy new networks, ranging from 3G to WiMAX, faster, cheaper and with greater certainty than the direct site acquisition or tower company alternatives.

Macropolitan was founded by Ryan Jarvis, previously Chief of Wireless Broadband at BT and Chairman of the FMCA, a global alliance of 27 operators. Jarvis was also co-founder and CEO of Megabeam, the pan-European hotspot operator acquired by Swisscom. Richard Greco is Chairman, he was previously co-founder and CEO of Bulldog. Macropolitan’s world-class investors include property magnate Vincent Tchenguiz and investment bank Miller Buckfire, the global leader in restructuring.

*Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.