The Belgian Federal Public Service of Foreign Affairs chooses Orange Business Services for global communications infrastructure

Paris, Dec. 8, 2009

The Belgian Federal Public Service of Foreign Affairs has selected Orange Business Services for the delivery of a global wide area network and value-added telecommunication services connecting all Belgian embassies, consulates and other formal representations abroad spanning over 100 countries. The contract has a value of more then 50 million euro.

At the heart of the solution, Orange will provide its global IP VPN services through either terrestrial or satellite links. The IP VPN services will be optimized through a converged (voice, video and data) network including a backup and non-critical traffic offloading architecture. In addition, Orange will provide a range of value added services, including firewalls, routers, WAN optimization and encryption devices as well as a 24 x 7 trilingual support and management desk. The network is slated to be fully operational by July 1, 2010, the start of the Belgian chair of the EU.

“During the RFP process, Orange offered the added value of more sites with fixed connectivity and more secondary connections via DSL, which ensured critical redundancy within the solution,” commented Jorg Leenaards, ICT director at The Belgian Federal Public Service of Foreign Affairs. “Overall, the Orange solution gave us highly secure data transmission and reduced risk at an overall more competitive price.”

The global WAN solution will allow The Belgian Federal Public Service of Foreign Affairs to execute its strategy in order to:

• optimize and control overall costs;

• establish a long term relationship with Orange Business Services, who has the broadest global network coverage and local support with its own employees in 166 countries;

• deploy a unified, converged and modular environment with the ability to sustain multiple applications (voice, data, video, priority-based routing);

• provide optimized and better performing solutions for end-users; and

• enhance network stability with pro-active and efficient management, as well as introduce flexibility in capacity management and geographical reach.

Dr. Helmut Reisinger, senior vice president, Europe at Orange Business Services remarked, “This contract is one of the biggest multinational ICT tenders from governmental institutions that has come on the market in Belgium in recent years. We are grateful for the award which is a huge recognition of our work at a global scale, as well as the work from our multinational bid team lead out of Belgium. The focus of Orange in helping governments to provide state-of-the-art ICT infrastructure is paying off, and The Belgian Federal Public Service of Foreign Affairs adds to a series of recent wins in this domain.”

About Orange
Orange is the key brand of France Telecom, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. With 126 million customers, the Orange brand now covers Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the Group operates. At the end of 2008, France Telecom had consolidated sales of 53.5 billion euros (38.1 billion euros for the first nine months of 2009) and at Sept. 30, 2009, the Group had a customer base of 190 million customers in 32 countries. These include 128.8 million mobile customers and 13.4 million broadband Internet (ADSL) customers worldwide. Orange is the number three mobile operator and the number two provider of broadband Internet services in Europe and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunications services to multinational companies.

The Group's strategy, which is characterized by a strong focus on innovation, convergence and effective cost management, aims to establish Orange as an integrated operator and benchmark for new telecommunications services in Europe. Today the Group remains focused on its core activities as a network operator, while working to develop its position in new growth activities. To meet customer expectations, the Group strives to provide products and services that are simple and user-friendly, while maintaining a sustainable and responsible business model that can be adapted to the requirements of a fast-paced and changing eco-system.

France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on Euronext Paris (compartment A) and on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more information: www.orange.com, www.francetelecom.com, www.orange-business.com

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Personal
Communications Services Limited, Orange France or France Telecom.