US / Italy : Accenture and 3 Italia received top honor in the Content Entertainment, Applications and Services category as part of the International Engineering Consortium (IEC) InfoVision Awards program today at the Broadband World Forum (www.iec.org). The award honors the deployment of mobile television services based on the Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) technology.

“We are privileged to be recognized by one of the industry’s top conferences and associations,” said Fabio Mungo, senior executive in Accenture’s Communications and High Tech practice and a recipient of the award. “3 Italia was strongly positioned to benefit from DVB-H deployment and quick to strategically recognize the business benefits of implementing world’s first commercial DVB-H roll-out.”

In the saturated Italian mobile marketplace, where there are now more mobile phones than there are citizens, market differentiation via value-added services is essential. Mobile television, based on DVB-H technology that enables the distribution of high-quality content to mobile phones and handheld computer over existing digital television networks, presented a key opportunity for 3 Italia to provide its customers with new and compelling value-added services. Accenture was selected as the systems integrator and played a crucial role in the overall outcome of 3 Italia’s DVB-H deployment (www.accenture.com/dvb-h) .

“This is a milestone achievement and important industry recognition,” said Marco Narduzzi, Business Operations Director of 3 Power, the international business unit of 3 Italia, and one of the recipients of the award. “3 Italia was the first company to launch DVB-H commercially worldwide and got over 720,000 customers one year after the launch. 3 Italia through 3 Power is now also supporting the launch of DVB-H services in other geographic areas.”

The IEC’s InfoVision Awards recognize top contributions and innovations that help advance the information and communications technologies (ICT) industry. Hundreds applications for IEC’s InfoVision Award program were reviewed by a panel of judges chosen from the IEC’s Broadband World Forum Europe Technical Program Committee, which included industry experts from vendor companies, service providers and industry associations. Winners were announced today at a ceremony at the Estrel Convention Center in Berlin during the Broadband World Forum.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With approximately 170,000 people in 49 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$19.70 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2007. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

About 3 Italia

3 Italia is the mobile media company controlled by Hutchinson Whampoa Group, shareholder of 95.4 percent. Its other shareholders include NHS Investment S.A., (San Paolo IMI), Gemina and 3G Mobile Investments (Franco Bernabe Group). 3 Italia won a UMTS license in Italy in 2000 and began offering services in 2003, and is now the leader of UMTS and DVB-H markets in Italy with over 7.7 million UMTS customers and 719k DVB-H customers as of August 22, 2007.