Washington Gas Selects Alcatel-Lucent to Deploy High-Speed Communications System Linking Operations Throughout Greater Washington, D.C. Area

WASHINGTON and PARIS, Aug. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Washington Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of WGL Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: WGL), and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris andNYSE: ALU) today announced that Alcatel-Lucent has been selected to build the utility's new communications network linking Washington Gas operations throughout Washington, D.C., and the surrounding region.

Alcatel-Lucent's comprehensive leading Internet Protocol/Multiprotocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) solution will support Washington Gas in making better use of its existing infrastructure and enabling more efficient delivery of natural gas to the company's more than one million residential, commercial and industrial customers in the greater Washington, D.C. area.

The new network will support mission-critical utility applications and data requirements throughout Washington Gas' service territory.  For example, this new high-speed network will be able to monitor the company's 12,200 miles of pipeline, checking for any disruptions and alerting management immediately.  The network also will enable Washington Gas to continue to evolve its internal data networks to ensure customers natural gas delivery when they need it, at the most economical price and highest reliability possible, while reducing its carbon footprint.  

"Migrating to all-IP is a significant part of our next-generation network, which will enable us to better manage our piping infrastructure to ensure more reliability, safety and cost efficiency," said  Mr. Orlando Spencer, Project Manager and Communications Architect for Washington Gas. "The Alcatel-Lucent IP/MPLS solution plays a key role in our strategy, which includes continued service delivery improvement as well as support for critical applications such as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)."

Deployment of the network is scheduled to begin this year and continue into 2011.  

"Utilities worldwide are transitioning to IP/MPLS because it is the only technology capable of supporting all levels of mission-critical communications requirements of utilities on a single communications infrastructure," said Walt Paskowski, Vice President of Sales for Strategic Industries.

About Washington Gas

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Washington Gas is a wholly-owned subsidiary of WGL Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: WGL). The parent company holds a group of energy-related retail businesses that focus primarily on retail energy-marketing and commercial heating, ventilating and air conditioning services. Additional information about WGL Holdings is available on its Web site, www.wglholdings.com. Go to www.washingtongas.com for more information about Washington Gas Light Co.

About Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris andNYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare, transportation,  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 15.2 billion in 2009 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, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent's blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent. 

SOURCE Alcatel-Lucent

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