On June 17th in Tunisia, Alcatel signed an exclusive partnership with the “Cowsis” (the organizing committee of the WSIS) to provide telecommunications solutions for the next World Summit on Information Society to be held in Tunis (Tunisia) in November 2005. The partnership stipulates that Alcatel will provide the needed logistical and technical support to make this worldwide event a success.

Alcatel is also deploying a 3G/UMTS pilot network for the event which will enable demonstrations of high-speed UMTS services, such as video telephony between multimedia terminals (voice, images, video), videoconferencing, web browsing, music or image downloading, video streaming and chat.

This partnership is part of Alcatel's digital bridge initiative .

Representing Alcatel at the signing ceremony at the Cowsis headquarters in Tunis is Ozgur Remzi (left) Alcatel Vice President North, West and Central Africa. On right is Habib Ammar, President of Cowsis.

About WSIS
WSIS is the abbreviation for World Summit on the Information Society. The Summit is popularly referred to as WSIS (pronounced wiss-iss). Envisaged in two phases, the first Summit was held in Geneva 10-12 December 2003, where the foundations were laid by reaching agreement on a Declaration of Principles and a Plan of Action. The second phase will be held in Tunis, 16-18 November 2005, to implement the agenda leading up to achievable targets by 2015, and to agree on unfinished business, most importantly on the question of Internet governance and of financing mechanisms.