CTIA WIRELESS, LAS VEGAS, April 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Following its successful launch in February 2009, the ng Connect Program founded by Alcatel-Lucent is experiencing strong growth as industry interest in next generation networks and services continues to grow at a rapid pace. The ng Connect Program today announced four new members including leading companies from the music, telecommunication and education sectors bringing the total number of companies in the program to eighteen in the two months since its inception.

The ng Connect Program is a multi-industry initiative dedicated to establishing a rich and diverse ecosystem of infrastructure, devices, content and applications for both mobile and fixed broadband networks including 4G, Long Term Evolution (LTE), GPON and other ultra high bandwidth technologies.

The new members include:

Atlantic Records - Atlantic Records, which celebrated its 60th Anniversary in 2008, currently ranks as the #1 label in the music industry according to Nielsen Soundscan. Atlantic has released a string of recordings that have had a profound impact on the course of modern music, its rich history including such musical icons as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane, and Led Zeppelin.

Kyocera Communications Inc. (KCI) - the newly formed sales, marketing and service organization for Kyocera and Sanyo-branded wireless devices in the Americas. The company's devices are driving the convergence of telecommunications, broadband and multimedia.

LearningMate - a leading provider of end-to-end e-Learning education solutions. LearningMate develops engaging, instructionally sound, interactive learning experiences on a variety of technology platforms and devices. The company has a significant presence in the United States, United Kingdom and India, and serves a global clientele comprised of education publishers, online schools, universities, government agencies, non-profits and education consortia.

MediaTile - a worldwide supplier of award-winning, all-in-one cellular digital signage and kiosk solutions that are remarkably easy-to-deploy and operate. Just add power to MediaTile Digital Sign in a Box(TM) or Kiosk in a Box(TM) systems and use the web-based Mediacast Portal to manage and monitor your advertising, informational or interactive communications network. Backed by MediaTile best practices, Return On Message(TM) (ROM) Methodology, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, end-to-end service and support, and a creative media team, your network will be up and running in record time, with record results.

"We are really pleased with the tremendous industry interest in the ng Connect Program generated in just a few short months since our launch," said Derek Kuhn, vice president of Emerging Technology and Media, Alcatel-Lucent. "The ng Connect program is making great progress signing up new members who are actively working together to build an open ecosystem that we know can bring whole new classes of services to market; services that can leverage the growing capabilities of service-aware IP networks, IMS and more."

New Proof of Concept Demonstrations

The ng Connect Program will demonstrate end-to-end next generation broadband applications at the CTIA Wireless 2009 trade show and exhibition in the Alcatel-Lucent Booth (#6714). Demos will include a new dynamic digital signage demonstration and an e-Learning experience showing a two-way audio visual exchange between student and teacher. Other demonstrations are a next generation music and social networking service recently updated to include Atlantic Records' Rich Application Suite, Fanbase, a multi-player mobile gaming experience, and a real-time next generation healthcare application that allows patients to be monitored remotely using a combination of mobile handsets and televisions as well as a next generation augmented reality viral advertising application in a multi-screen environment.

Fanbase - Atlantic Records launched Fanbase as an extension of the artist.com online destination. The platform includes official and unofficial audio, video, chat, news, photos, tours info, and more. "The content within Fanbase is aggregated and streamed from the Internet. LTE and the NG Connect program allow us to learn from the next generation wireless technologies to ensure the best fan experience possible, whenever and wherever they are," said Paul Sinclair, SVP of Digital Media at Atlantic Records. The Fanbase platform includes a social networking widget, desktop application, connected CD with bonus album content, and mobile application.

Dynamic Digital Signage - ng Connect Program members Alcatel-Lucent, SIGNEXX and dimedis collaborated on a new dynamic digital signage demonstration which highlights their ability to provide real time content updates to digital signs via LTE.

e-Learning - Members Words & Numbers, Alcatel-Lucent and LearningMate have created a new Proof of Concept showing a two way audio and visual teaching experience demonstrating the potential for wireless broadband technology to support fast, 'anytime, anywhere' learning experiences. The demonstration integrates the Alcatel-Lucent Omnitouch My Teamwork Conference and Collaboration Tool, LearningMate's QuAD assessment portal and LMS Interoperability Framework (LIF) as well as learning content from Words & Numbers.

The ng Connect Program, by helping bring new applications and services to market more quickly, will facilitate an expansion of the revenue base for service providers and provide new opportunities for others in the value chain. To accomplish this, the ng Connect Program is developing a variety of pre-integrated solutions featuring the latest innovations in network, device and software technologies.

About LTE

LTE is a new wireless broadband technology that delivers significantly faster data speeds with the potential of 100 Mbps downstream and 30 Mbps upstream with reduced latency, allowing end users to consume more complex content at faster speeds, complementing the broadband capabilities of fixed networking technologies such as GPON.

About The ng Connect Program

The ng Connect Program is an industry organization committed to the development and rapid deployment of the next generation of broadband services based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) and other ultra high bandwidth technologies. Founded in 2009, the ng Connect Program is supported by leading network, consumer electronics, application and content providers including 4DK, Alcatel-Lucent, Atlantic Records, Buzznet, chumby, Connect2Media, dimedis, FISHLABS, HP, Kyocera Communications Inc., LearningMate, MediaTile, QNX, Samsung, SIGNEXX, Total Immersion, TuneWiki and Words & Numbers. For more information on the ng Connect Program, please visit: http://www.ngconnect.org.

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

SOURCE Alcatel-Lucent