Agere Systems Supports Open Base Station Architecture Initiative with Leading Communications Infrastructure Portfolio

• OBSAI promoters welcome Agere into global effort to develop open market for 2.5G and 3G wireless base stations
• Agere ready with systems-proven SerDes that meets OBSAI RP3 spec

Tuesday Feb. 24, 2004 - CANNES, France (3GSM World Congress, Quai Albert, Port Vieux) -- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A, AGR.B) today announced that it has joined the global Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI). Agere plans to support the organization with its wealth of world-class base station components as well as decades of experience and systems expertise.

Agere, one of the world's top communications infrastructure integrated circuit (IC) suppliers, offers many critical technologies and components for wireless base stations. These include very high-performance digital signal processors (DSPs), RF power transistors, world-leading traffic management silicon and highly sophisticated serializer/deserializer (SerDes) "macros" that are available to all of the OEMs that Agere serves with custom silicon.

"We certainly welcome Agere to OBSAI at this important juncture. We have finalized the key interface specifications, and all of the promoter and supporter companies, including Agere, are busy engaging with our mutual partners and customers," said Jukka Klemettila, chairperson of OBSAI. "I'm especially pleased at how quickly we've accomplished many of our goals and the level of cooperation I see under the OBSAI umbrella. Operators and mobile broadband users are sure to benefit."

Most importantly to OEMs searching for the key interface silicon they need, Agere has a fully validated and tested SerDes that is 100 percent compliant to the newly ratified OBSAI Reference Point 3 radio interface specification.

Agere has one of the broadest portfolios of SerDes and high-speed interface technology in the industry and extensive experience integrating these SerDes into SoCs. Agere's interface portfolio supports speeds from 155 megabits per second to 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s) and offers integration into systems on a chip (SoCs) compliant with standards including 1, 2 and 4 Gigabit Fibre Channel, 1.5 and 3 Gb/s SATA and SAS, SCSI, PCI, PCI-X, PCI-X 2.0, PCI Express, SPI-3/4/5, SFI-4, serial RapidIO and XAUI.

OBSAI (www.obsai.org) was formed among leading base station vendors and module and component manufacturers to create a set of open specifications for base station architecture. By defining a basic modular architecture and the detailed specifications for the internal interfaces between modules, OBSAI aims to create a market for cellular base stations that will substantially reduce the development effort and costs that have been traditionally associated with creating new base station products. Not only will wireless operators benefit from greater competition among base station vendors, OBSAI promoters say, but they will also have the opportunity to bring new and advanced services to market earlier.

"OBSAI is a potentially elegant and low-cost solution for multi-standard BTS solutions," said Mike Elser of Agere's Networking IC Division. "Agere's system-on-chip (SoC) integration expertise with our OBSAI-compliant SerDes and widely-deployed DSP intellectual property will help us to provide solutions to our customers that allow them to deploy wireless broadband systems faster."

Over 75 companies have joined OBSAI to deploy next-generation wireless broadband earlier and at less cost than would otherwise be possible.

"More base stations worldwide are powered by Agere's DSPs than any other DSP on the market," said Will Strauss, principal analyst at DSP market research firm Forward Concepts in Scottsdale, Ariz. "And my just completed 2003 wireless infrastructure DSP research shows Agere at No. 1 again. I have to believe the OBSAI community will benefit from Agere's participation."

Agere also offers RF power transistors for every wireless frequency and protocol. This critical and highly advanced base station power amplifier technology has been chosen by such top global OEMs as NEC and Sewon Teletech. Several Agere patented and patent-pending manufacturing and circuit design innovations make these products among the best in gain, linearity and thermal efficiency.

Visit Agere's Web site at www.agere.com. Customers in the U.S. may also call the Agere Systems Customer Response Center at 1-800-372-2447. Customers in Canada may call 1-800-553-2448. Customers outside those countries may call 1-610-712-4323. Fax inquiries may be directed to 1-610-712-4106, or e-mail queries to docmaster@agere.com. Written inquiries should be sent to Agere Systems, Room 10A-301C, 1110 American Parkway NE, Lehigh Valley Central Campus, Allentown, PA, 18109, USA.

Agere Systems is a premier provider of advanced integrated circuit solutions for high-density storage, wireless data and multiservice networking applications. The company is the market leader in providing chips for desktop, mobile and consumer electronics hard disk drives. Agere's wireless data portfolio includes industry-leading solutions for data-capable cellular phones, as well as Wi-Fi/802.11 solutions for wireless LANs and computing applications. Agere also provides custom and standard networking solutions to move information across wired, wireless and enterprise networks. Agere's customers include the leading PC manufacturers, wireless terminal providers, network equipment suppliers and hard disk drive providers. More information about Agere Systems is available from its web site at www.agere.com.