PARIS and NEW DELHI, April 30 /PRNewswire/ --

- JV Will Manage Airtel's Migration to Next Generation Networks
(NGN) to Offer Advanced Services Like High-Speed Internet, Triple Play,
Media-Rich VAS, MPLS, VPN for Both Retail and Business Customers

- First Managed Services Partnership for Broadband and Telephone
Services in India

Bharti Airtel, Asia's leading integrated telecom service
provider, and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced
that they have formed a joint venture to manage Bharti Airtel's pan-India
broadband and telephone services and help Airtel's transition to next
generation networks. Under the joint venture, Alcatel-Lucent will design,
plan, deploy, optimize and manage Bharti Airtel's broadband and telephone
network across India. A new legal entity is being formed which will be
operated by Alcatel-Lucent.

Commenting on the partnership, Manoj Kohli, CEO & Joint
Managing Director, Bharti Airtel said, "This joint venture is another step
towards Bharti Airtel's vision to continuously redefine and deliver the
benchmarks of customer experience. We will leverage Alcatel-Lucent's global
expertise in IP transformation and network management while allowing us to
focus on customer delivery and market growth."

"It will also help us accelerate performances as we migrate to
next generation networks for our broadband and telephone customers, opening
the door to advanced services and applications," he added.

"We appreciate the opportunity that Bharti Airtel has given us
to demonstrate our worldwide expertise in network transformation, managed
network services and IP transformation," said Ben Verwaayen, CEO of
Alcatel-Lucent. "The expansion of our relationship is drawn on our strengths
as a global services player, ready to partner with innovative customers in
their business transformation plans," he added.

This managed services partnership will include all end-to-end
activities - service rollout, installation and fault repair, service
continuity and transformation. It will support Bharti Airtel's transformation
to next generation networks, offering advanced services like high-speed
internet, triple play, media-rich VAS, MPLS, VPN for both retail and business
customers. The partnership will also drive optimal capital investment and
increase operational efficiency by moving voice and data traffic onto a
single, 'packetized' infrastructure.

About Bharti Airtel Limited:

Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is one of
Asia's leading integrated telecom services provider with operations in India
and Sri Lanka and an aggregate of over 96.6 million customers as of end of
March 2009, consisting of 93.92 million mobile customers. Bharti Airtel
Limited has been voted as India's most innovative company, in a survey
conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

Bharti Airtel is structured into three strategic business units - Mobile
services, Telemedia services and Enterprise services. The mobile business
offers services in India and Sri Lanka. The Telemedia business provides
broadband and telephone services in 95 cities, DTH services and has recently
forayed into the IPTV services. The Enterprise business provides end-to-end
telecom solutions to corporate customers and national and international long
distance services to carriers. All these services are provided under the
Airtel brand. Airtel's high-speed optic fibre network currently spans over
101,337 kms covering all the major cities in the country. The company has two
international landing stations in Chennai that connects two submarine cable
systems - i2i to Singapore and SEA-ME-WE-4 to Europe. For more information,
visit http://www.bhartiairtel.in

About Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted
partner of service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide,
providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services
to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking,
IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the
unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the
largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With
operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global
services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with
a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 16.98 billion in
2008 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris.
For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet:
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

PARIS and NEW DELHI, April 30 /PRNewswire/ --