Hilversum, The Netherlands, 26th October, 2006 --- NEC Philips Unified Solutions (NEC Philips), a leading provider of enterprise communications solutions, today announced UNIVERGE Assured Mobility, a new Mobility Solution designed to accelerate and advance the mobile worker’s experience providing for seamless, secure communications, from any location and managed on any device.

 

With UNIVERGE Assured Mobility, NEC Philips will offer customers comprehensive mobility by combining voice, data and real-time multimedia with mission-critical business applications in a user-friendly, fully integrated and managed wireless solution that is robust, secure and highly scalable.

Assured Mobility includes integrated applications such as unified messaging, location services support, presence information, intelligent call redirection and directory information on a wide variety of mobile devices, empowering individual users and making organisations more agile and productive.

 

“The SMB and medium enterprise markets are looking to inexpensively deploy a flexible WLAN system that meets current needs and can be scaled up as the organization finds additional uses for wireless in the headquarters and in branch offices,” said Jean Kaplan, Research Analyst in IDC's Enterprise Networks group. “Key customer requirements for WLANs over the next few years will be the ability to support voice, video security, upgrade to 802.11n radios, and the ability to easily deploy new access points.”

                                                                                          

Assured Mobility is based on NEC’s innovative Wireless Optimized Architecture (WOA), a third generation Wireless LAN (WLAN) architecture. This architecture provides a new approach to deploying WLAN solutions by combining the simplicity of first generation fat access points with the robust, secure and scalable qualities of a controller-based, second generation WLAN solution. The offering incorporates distributed traffic control and intelligence, simplified deployment and a sound strategy for investment protection. NEC’s WOA has been optimised for real-time communications by incorporating quality of service, seamless handover, increased handset battery life and high availability. It is also an ideal architecture for supporting future high-speed WLAN standards such as 802.11n, because the architecture improves bandwidth utilization and reduces network bottlenecks.

 

“UNIVERGE is NEC’s architecture for unifying multimedia networks while enabling robust business solutions. With UNIVERGE Assured Mobility, NEC has taken a strategic, customer-centric approach to creating a comprehensive, feature-rich wireless communications offering,” said Benne van der Lugt, vice president UNIVERGE Products Division at NEC Philips Unified Solutions. “Our Assured Mobility solution allows organizations of all sizes to reap productivity benefits realized from anywhere, anytime, limitless communications, while they still benefit from the same reliability, security, scalability and investment protection they’re accustomed to with all UNIVERGE solutions”

 

NEC’s WOA offers maximum scalability by utilizing a combination of several controller types and access points in a highly distributed, integrated and flexible architecture. Dedicated server-based controllers and controller cards are offered for making medium and large-scale deployments possible. In addition embedded controllers that can manage several access points make it simple and cost-effective to deploy small networks. In this way enterprise-grade solutions do not only come within reach of large enterprise networks, but also for remote office deployments and medium size businesses.

 

Within the UNIVERGE Assured Mobility concept the following new products are being introduced for the 2000 IPS and SV7000 IP communication servers:

 

UNIVERGE WL1700-MS – High-performance, scalable WLAN features for remote locations or the SMB market. Acts as both an access point and controller.

 

UNIVERGE WL5050 – A robust WLAN controller.

 

UNIVERGE WL5100 – A centralized, secure server-based controller, which configures and controls access points and manages users’ identities as they roam.

 

UNIVERGE WL1500-AP – Workhorse access point of the Assured Mobility WLAN. Can be deployed anywhere to provide network access, secure mobility and seamless roaming.

 

UNIVERGE WL1600 Outdoor AP – Weatherized complement to the `L1500. Extends WLAN coverage and secure mobility campus-wide enabling users to stay connected as they roam from building to building and is suitable for extreme outdoor environments and unsecured locations.

 

UNIVERGE Wireless LAN Management System (WLMS) – A full-featured client server application. Simplifies WLAN operations, by performing pre and post-deployment planning, configuration and monitoring. Creates detailed reports, provides live or offline changes and gives users the power to configure automatically across the entire network.

 

UNIVERGE Terminal MH250 – A full-featured, enterprise-class, voice over wireless LAN IP phone with integrated business functionality. The handset features a colour LCD display, presence capability, and is optimised for voice, leveraging our WOA-enhanced SIP over WLAN to deliver assured mobile communications.

 

Assured Mobility products will become available in European markets starting from Q1 2007.

 

About NEC Philips Unified Solutions

NEC Philips Unified Solutions is a leading provider of comprehensive communications solutions to organisations of all types and sizes. Established in 2006 as a joint venture of NEC Corporation and Royal Philips Electronics, the company draws on more than 50 years experience in providing communication systems, applications, networks and services to customers worldwide. NEC Philips Unified Solutions is headquartered in Hilversum, the Netherlands, and serves its customers through a global network of sales organisations, business partners and value-added resellers. For more information: www.nec-philips.com.

 

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) is one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of its diverse and global base of customers. NEC delivers tailored solutions in the key fields of computer, networking and electron devices, by integrating its technical strengths in IT and Networks, and by providing advanced semiconductor solutions through NEC Electronics Corporation. The NEC Group employs more than 150,000 people worldwide and had net sales of approximately 4,825 billion yen (approx. $41.2 billion) in the fiscal year ended March 2006. For additional information, please visit the NEC home page at: http://www.nec.com

 

About Royal Philips Electronics

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 30.4 billion in 2005. With activities in the three interlocking domains of healthcare, lifestyle and technology and 161,500 employees in more than 60 countries, it has market leadership positions in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, color television sets, electric shavers, lighting and silicon system solutions. News from Philips is located at www.newscenter.philips.com.

 

UNIVERGE is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation

 

For more information, please contact:

 

Robert van Amerongen

NEC Philips Unified Solutions

Tel: +31 35 689 1521

Email: robert.van.amerongen@nec-philips.com

 

Forward-looking statements

This release may contain certain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial condition, results of operations and business of NEC and Philips and certain plans and objectives of both companies with respect to these items. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future and there are many factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.