April 14, 2005 Petah Tikva, Israel -- ECI Telecom today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the optical activities and technology of China's Eastern Communications, for an undisclosed amount. The operations of the acquired unit will be merged with the company's existing joint venture, Hangzhou ECI Telecommunications. The acquisition broadens ECI's current multi-service provisioning platform (MSPP) product line.

"With this acquisition, ECI now adds a cost-effective R&D and manufacturing operation in China," remarks Doron Inbar, president and CEO of ECI Telecom. "The acquired operations, combined with ECI's design and development expertise, will shorten our time to market and enable us to meet the needs of our worldwide customer base."

The company is a global supplier of telecommunications platforms supplier to carriers and service providers, specializing in metro optical networks, broadband access services, bandwidth management, and carrier-class VoIP platforms.