BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 13, 2002 - Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, and network integrator, Telindus, today announced that Telindus has signed an agreement with the Belgian National Research Network (BELNET) to build a new Metropolitan Area Network for the Belgian Federal Government built around Cisco networking technologies.

The new network, called FedMAN, will connect 15 different buildings in Brussels, giving government staff joint broadband connection of 155 Mbps. The shared network means they will be able to communicate in a more efficient and secure way internally. It will also make it easier for the public to access government services and will save on administrative costs.

BELNET, working with Telindus, a Cisco Gold Partner and Cisco partner of the year, plan to have installed the high-speed network by September. It will be able to serve up to 60,000 users.

"We chose Cisco technology because of the excellent price-quality ratio and their wide product range for the entire infrastructure. It allows us to create a homogeneous and well-organised network," said Pierre Bruyhre, Director of BELNET. "Because our employees are familiar with Cisco equipment we are also saving a lot on training. If you add all these factors together you get a great total cost of ownership".

The architecture of the network is fully redundant. Two core routers, from the next-generation Cisco 12000 series, will provide back-up for each other. They are connected to the end-user routers via a dual path from different service providers using a different way to reach the same point. This guarantees reliability and redundancy. The services providers are Belgacom, Colt Telecom and Brutili.

The connections in the nodes are made though powerful Cisco 12012 routers with an upstream of 1 gigabit per second. At the federal services there are always two flexible Cisco 7206 VXR routers, a Catalyst 2950 switch and a Cisco 2509 router provided. The latter functions as a terminal server to establish an Internet connection with ordinary modems. Finally, Cisco 7507 routers are used in the installation of the firewalls.

"BELNET has chosen an architecture for the FedMAN network which will allow the Belgian government to sustain the growing number of e-Government applications and services as well as meet the future Internet bandwidth demands from the Belgian Federal public institutions. Combining Telindus networking expertise and services (design, project management, installation and maintenance) and Cisco technologies to build the network allows BELNET to be prepared for the future," said Marc Colson, of Cisco's Government team in Belgium.

About BELNET

BELNET is the national research network of Belgium that provides Internet access to universities, schools, colleges, research institutes and agencies of the federal administration. Thanks to BELNET their staff members can rely on a reasonably priced permanent broadband connection. Moreover, BELNET has available several connections to big foreign network nodes such as Internet2, Canarie, Giant, etc. Established in 1993, BELNET now has more than 280,000 users in 150 institutions. More information is available at http://www.belnet.be/.

About Telindus

The publicly listed, Belgium headquartered Telindus Group (listed on Euronext Brussels, ticker TEL) is a European expert in data and telecommunications networks.

Telindus has extensive expertise in all areas of modern telecommunications applications and technologies including LAN, MAN, WAN, Internet, E-business, network access and security, VOIP, VPN, fixed and mobile communication. Founded in 1969, the Telindus Group currently employs over 2,400 people across sixty establishments spanning sixteen countries in addition to an extensive network of global agents across all continents.

Telindus has a broad portfolio of customers and can offer both regional and pan European references in virtually every industry sector.

Telindus has its corporate headquarters at 335 Geldenaaksebaan, Heverlee (close to the city of Leuven), 3001 in Belgium. For more information on Telindus' networking solutions and services, please visit www.telindus.com.