Sri Lankan Telecom selects Carrier Cockpit from Ascade and MillenniumIT 

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, May21, 2007 – Ascade, the global market-leader in Business Operations Systems for trading and exchanging voice traffic, today announced that it has a signed a major deal with Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), in partnership with Millennium Information Technologies (MillenniumIT). After a thorough evaluation, SLT has selected Ascade’s market-leading software solution Carrier Cockpit™ Suite to manage its rapidly growing international carrier voice business.

“We were very happy by Ascade’s extensive carrier industry experience and delivery team. Through the partnership with regional operators, we will increase our traffic volumes substantially and Carrier Cockpit™ will be instrumental for us in order to handle this growth”, comments Mr. CBR Pererra, Chief Global Officer of SLT.

“MillenniumIT is very pleased to have partnered with Ascade AB, Sweden, a leader in its field, in providing a least-cost routing solution to SLT”, says Mr. Peter D’ Almeida, Chief Executive, Enterprise and Service Provider business of MillenniumIT. “As a premier technology partner of SLT, we believe this strategic initiative will help SLT to handle increasing international voice traffic while enhancing overall profitability by optimizing the call routing process."

“SLT is going through a very interesting development where they will grow their volumes rapidly. We are pleased that we were considered as the only valid option to handle their strong expansion and we look forward to working closely with SLT to ensure that they achieve their ambitious targets”, comments Henrik Anderberg, CEO of Ascade Asia Pacific.

Through the implementation of Carrier Cockpit™, SLT will benefit from unprecedented financial control and risk management. Carrier Cockpit™ provides extensive business reporting and flexibility for all the users to drill down on all its key business performance metric and efficiencies in the voice traffic supply chain. It enables real time control of its wholesale business profitability.

SLT will also benefit from Ascade’s unique Correlated Rating solution whereby the revenue and cost per call is kept intact throughout the rating process ensuring correct calculations of the actual margin per call, customer and product. Without Correlated Rating, it is not possible to establish the correct margin and carriers will have to make do with approximation of the margins which in turn could lead to substantial margin drainage and revenue leakage.

“We have seen many cases where carriers have benefited tremendously from our business performance analysis and control of their margins on specific customers and products. To be successful on today’s market, you must be able to analyze margins and profitability correctly; there is just no room for approximations”, concludes Henrik Anderberg.

ABOUT SLT 
Sri Lanka Telecom (www.slt.lk) is one of the country’s most valuable blue chip companies with an annual turnover in excess of US $ 400.0 million. NTT Communications Corporation of Japan owns a 35.2% stake in Sri Lanka Telecom Limited (SLT) while 49.2% is owned by the Government of Sri Lanka and 15.3% is listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange.  
The Company has a customer base of over one million including multinational corporations, large and small corporate, retail and domestic customers. Today with NTT of Japan as a strategic partner, SLT provides facilities and services to its customers, which are unmatched in scope. These services range from domestic and international voice, advance data transmission services which include internet services on leased lines, broadband [on ADSL] and dial up, data circuits, frame relay solutions to IP based services such as IP-VPN, total corporate solutions, satellite uplink services and mobile telephony through the fully owned subsidiary Mobitel.

ABOUT MillenniumIT 
Millennium Information Technologies is a cutting-edge software developer and marketer specialising in the capital market industry. The Company’s automated trading system, Millennium Exchange™, currently powers several stock exchanges and depositories in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

In Sri Lanka, MillenniumIT is also a trusted IT architecture, service and consulting provider creating innovative, scalable solutions for business and industry in association with our technology partners. For more information please visit www.millenniumit.com.

ABOUT ASCADE AB 
Ascade is the global market-leader in Business Operations Systems for trading and exchanging voice traffic between telecom carriers. Our solution, Carrier Cockpit™ Suite, optimizes and automates all aspects of a carrier’s wholesale and bilateral business while providing management with real-time business control capabilities.

Carrier Cockpit™ Suite, developed together with leading international carriers, is the most mature and widely used Business Operations System for managing the wholesale carrier business worldwide. Customers include Reach, Korea Telecom, Taiwan Fixed Network, Swisscom, Telenor Global Services, Czech Telecom, Lattelekom, Elion, Allstream, Finnet International, Sunrise, Telekom Austria, MobileOne and more.

Ascade AB is a privately held company owned by founders and leading Nordic investment firms CapMan, listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange, and SEB Företagsinvest, the venture capital division of Nordic financial services group SEB, listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. 
For more information please visit: www.ascade.com