Genie and BT Cellnet to Offer Wireless Data Access Services to Enterprises via SEVEN'S Global Network Platform

First to Be Able to Offer SEVEN'S Turnkey Wireless Data Access Solutions to Enterprise Customers

Cannes, France, February 19, 2001 - Genie, BT's Mobile Internet Division, and one of Europe's leading integrated mobile portals with 2.8 million registrations on its Web and mobile WAP portals and BT Cellnet, intend to offer wireless data access solutions to enterprise customers through the global network platform developed by SEVEN. Genie, along with BT Cellnet, aims to be the first network operator able to offer SEVEN'S comprehensive, turnkey wireless data solutions to enterprise and business customers.

"Genie's new business-to-business focus, along with BT Cellnet, intends to offer highly sought after, value-added services to the business audience who has historically been the demographic that leads adoption of new services and technologies," said Kent Thexton, president, Genie. "This platform will also link active business users to select Genie services."

"By using SEVEN'S platform, Genie and BT Cellnet will have the opportunity to address the complexities of the wireless market from the core of the network rather than from the edge of the network or application layer. We will be able to provide and deploy new value-added services for our enterprise customers with speed and simplicity," said Peter Richardson, director of sales and marketing, BT Cellnet.

"Enterprise customers comprise the core market for wireless data access services, but there have been numerous obstacles that have kept IT managers from committing to an enterprise-wide wireless strategy. The simplicity of this solution is likely to change the whole landscape. Genie's history of innovation and dedication to customers continues with today's announcement," said Bill Nguyen, founder of SEVEN. "Our solution takes existing PC and intranet investments beyond the desktop. Without expensive integration projects or R&D organizations, IT managers can implement simple, efficient and secure wireless strategies."

For enterprise customers, the SEVEN platform provides a simple, one-stop solution to a previously complex and expensive process.

For carriers, the SEVEN platform makes it possible to market value-added services such as enterprise unified messaging and secure VPN access by bridging the technical and implementation complexities between the wireless network and enterprise back-end systems.

SEVEN'S network and carrier-centric combination of data centers, professional services and software solutions create a services delivery platform for the integration of voice, messaging, Web content, enterprise data and physical location. The result is an always-on, always-connected, content-rich, client-device-adaptable, high-bandwidth wireless experience for mobile professionals and their organizations.

About Genie

Genie, BT's mobile Internet portal and currently a wholly-owned subsidiary, will, from the beginning of April be owned 75 percent by BT wireless with the remaining 25 percent owned by BT group.

Genie currently has web and WAP portals in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong and a WAP portal in Malaysia with more than 2.8 million registrations in total. Content on the portals includes cutting edge entertainment content from E4 and MTV, breaking sports results from eXcite Sport, the latest news from Guardian Unlimited, business stories from 451.com, last minute travel deals from lastminute.com and up-to-the-minute stock quotes from T D Waterhouse. Genie has also partnered with world-leading portals including AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and Freeserve to enable their customers to access their emails via Genie.

Over the coming months, Genie is pursuing an international rollout program in other countries in Europe and Asia Pacific for both its web and WAP portals.

In November 2000, Genie launched the UK's first exclusively online mobile service offering mobile phones with mobile Internet access through text messaging and WAP.

About BT Cellnet

• Today BT Cellnet has 10.24 million customers using its voice services including over 1 million customers with Mobile Internet enabled phones
• BT Cellnet is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT plc

About SEVEN

SEVEN provides the only global infrastructure that allows telecommunications carriers to deliver wireless data services to enterprises as turnkey solutions. SEVEN'S international network of data centers, professional services, and software solutions manages every aspect of wireless data services between carriers, enterprises and enterprise applications. Further information is available at www.seven.com.