MEXICO CITY, April 23, 2009 - Cisco and the Mexican government today announced three strategic memoranda of understanding to kick off cooperation to help the country advance in terms of global competitiveness and gross domestic product by 2025.

At a meeting held at the official presidential residence, Los Pinos, in Mexico City, in the presence of President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers signed collaborative memoranda of understanding with Secretary of Education Alonso Lujambio Irazabal, Secretary of Economy Gerardo Ruiz Mateos and Secretary of Social Development, Ernesto Cordero Arroyo.

The memoranda outline a series of steps to begin working together to improve the competitiveness of the Mexican economy, deepen the country's technical talent pool and promote digital inclusion.

"Today's collaboration with President Calderon's administration underscores the importance that Cisco places on Mexico," said Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers. "With business and government working together we can make a positive impact on education, facilitate greater effectiveness in government, and further extend broadband to rural areas. With the network as the platform, we have the potential to bring even greater opportunity to Mexico and its citizens."

These memoranda are aligned with Cisco's globalization strategy of supporting sustainable growth, innovation and talent development in key global economies.

Education:

Among the goals which Cisco plans to pursue in the collaboration described in the memoranda are:

• Cooperation with the Secretaria of Public Education to establish two pilot programs to help improve the teaching of 21st-century skills in basic and middle education by increasing the competency, productivity and professional development of educators.
• Establishment of a co-operative Education Center of Excellence within Mexico, incorporating leading universities, global education experts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other leading non-governmental organizations. Its objective will be to help carry out the transformation of Mexico's education strategy.
• Support for a 21st-Century collaboration environment with education leaders worldwide through the Cisco® 3.0 Leadership Program and a Cisco TelePresence^TM for Education Network with key universities around the world.

Digital Government:

• Cisco will establish a Center for Competitiveness and Globalization working together with the Secretaria of Economy to share best practices and to support the government in the design and implementation of programs aimed at providing government services more efficiently.
• The objective is to develop a "one-stop solution" for maximizing collaborative work among government agencies to achieve substantial improvements in competitiveness.

Rural Connectivity:

• Cisco will develop programs for rural connectivity in collaboration with the Secretaria of Social Development, international multilateral agencies and private companies. The programs will focus on deploying infrastructure to provide access to voice, video and data services for rural populations at sustainable economic levels.
• Cisco will support the preparation and implementation of a business model to design and prototype an inexpensive and scalable wireless network solution to bring affordable broadband connectivity to rural communities in the region of Yucatán, Mexico. The initial pilot project is expected to include ten sites.

"We're pleased to work together with the federal government in Mexico to implement these initiatives that should bring about swift economic change," stated Jaime Valles, vice president of Cisco Latin America. "The ability to help educational and governmental institutions around the country take advantage of the network to promote 21st-century learning skills and develop collaborative work in government is a tremendous opportunity. We're pleased that the federal government in Mexico shares this vision and is committed to implementing these programs."

Notes to editors:

Key Facts & Figures

• Mexico represents a key global priority and growth opportunity for Cisco.
• Cisco created a Mexico Board within the company to lead Cisco's Mexican operations and help increase Mexico's global competitiveness and standard of living by providing information and communication technology tools, knowledge and execution through a public-private relationship.
• Executive members of the board include Paul Mountford, president of Emerging Markets; Jaime Valles, vice president of Latin America; Carlos Dominguez, senior vice president with the office of the chairman and CEO; and Angel Mendez, senior vice president of Customer Value Chain Management.
• Cisco has committed significant personnel and operations to Mexico, including a large manufacturing presence in Ciudad Juárez.
• In fiscal year 2008, product bookings in Mexico grew approximately 30 percent over the prior year.
• The Cisco Networking Academy® program currently has more than 50,000 students enrolled in Mexico, the second-largest student population for the corporation after the United States.
• Mexico has 389 Cisco Networking Academy sites nationally, which have trained more than 161,000 students since the program's inception in 1998.

Supporting Resources:

• Cisco Globalization Perspectives http://www.cisco.com/go/globalisation
• Globalisation news and media resources http://newsroom.cisco.com/globalisation
• Subscribe to Cisco RSS Feeds http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html
• Cisco Platform Blog http://blogs.cisco.com/news/
• Cisco Global Education initiative: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/citizenship/socio-economic/globalEd.html
• Cisco Sponsored/Drive Education Site - Get Ideas: http://www.getideas.org/
• Mexican Presidency: http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/prensa/?contenido=44332

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