LERNOUT & HAUSPIE SPEECH PRODUCTS ANNOUNCES LICENSE AGREEMENT WITH ORANGE

L&H™ RealSpeak™ to Play Integral Role in Product R&D Program at Orange's Intelligent Home Research Centre

IEPER, BELGIUM, BURLINGTON, Mass. -- July 19, 2001 -- Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV (OTC: LHSPQ) ('L&H' or 'the Company'), a world leader in speech and language technology, products and services, today announced that its Speech and Language Technologies Division (SLT) has signed a license agreement with Orange, the UK's fastest growing mobile phone operator. Under the terms of the agreement, Orange will employ L&H's award-winning text-to-speech-technology L&H™ RealSpeak™ in its leading-edge intelligent home research centre, 'Orange at home', based in Hertfordshire, England. The research centre serves as a test facility for demonstrating Orange's vision of a world where 'communication and access to information is simple, human and intuitive.'

Under the current research program, L&H RealSpeak for UK-English will be tested to assess its ability to serve as a natural and practical interface between people and their home appliances and systems. L&H's text-to-speech engine will allow individuals and focus groups occupying 'Orange at home' to request information from the centre's home systems (collectively called Wildfire). Wildfire will have the ability, using L&H RealSpeak, to verbally respond to requests in a clear, natural sounding synthetic voice. A basic example of a dialogue that would occur between Wildfire and a test occupant would be: Occupant: 'Wildfire'; Wildfire: 'Hello, how may I help you'; Occupant: 'Turn on the light in the kitchen'; Wildfire: 'Right away'. Using L&H RealSpeak for the voice output, lightening, climate controls, security systems, door locks, audio-visual systems, curtains, baths, and numerous other home appliances and systems are expected to be readily voice-controlled from a variety of Orange wirefree™ devices. More than 50 leading-edge suppliers and partners have provided a range of advanced home appliances and systems, which Orange has adapted and integrated into the centre's wirefree™ home environment. The world's first virtual newscaster, Ananova, an Orange company, is one of many components that have been incorporated into the 'Orange at home' project. Speech-enabled by L&H RealSpeak, Ananova has delivered since April 2000 personalised news and information on demand via www.ananova.com.

"This agreement highlights the multitude of applications for speech and language technologies in the home, where they can serve as a natural interface for information retrieval and appliance and systems control," said Peter Hauser, L&H's vice president and general manager, international and automotive. "Through our agreement with Orange, we are pleased to participate in an exciting and valuable project for the future." Mr. Hauser added: "L&H RealSpeak provides a natural and highly effective voice interface, offering a clear advantage over visual information displays that are often too large to be practically accommodated by mobile or handheld devices like Orange's wirefree™. Also, most users employ these devices while on the go, making key pad entries cumbersome."

Paul Waldron, Technical Architect of 'Orange at Home', said: "The objective of Orange is to point out which value-adding services the next generation wireless technologies can provide. By undertaking research now, and understanding how consumers use interactive services in the home today, we intend to be one of the first companies in Europe to bring to market services that make our customers' lives easier, simpler and better. Using today's technologies, we intend to deliver tomorrow's vision. The high quality of L&H RealSpeak technology meets the ease of use and natural interaction required by consumers for mobile and fixed services."

About L&H™ RealSpeak™

L&H™ RealSpeak™ is Lernout & Hauspie's advanced text-to-speech technology (TTS) that can generate nearly human sounding synthesized speech. It is used in a wide variety of advanced applications, from the creation of voice portals to speech-enabling virtual newscasters such as Ananova and BT's Vandrea. Typical markets for deploying L&H™ RealSpeak™ include: banking, financial, telecommunications, call center and media industries. L&H™ RealSpeak™ technology is currently available in fourteen twenty languages: US and UK English, French, Dutch, Korean, German, Castilian and Mexican Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish and Mandarin. The L&H RealSpeak TTS engine has already received a number of industry awards in recognition of its superior technology and capabilities. The engine won the Web software category of the Computing Awards for Excellence 2000 run by VNU Business Publications and the "Best Speech Technology" category at VOICE Europe 99. Other awards include SpeechTEK's "Peak Performance Awards", and the "Best of CTI Expo Spring 1999" Award.

About Orange

• Orange and wirefree are trademarks of Orange
• Orange plc, the UK's fastest growing mobile operator, was acquired by France Telecom in August 2000.
• Orange has operations in 20 countries across the world and aims to have a presence in 50 countries by 2005.
• As of July 2001 Orange has more than 35 million controlled customers.
• Orange has controlled interests in France, UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Romania, Denmark, Slovakia, Sweden, Ivory Coast, Dominican Republic, Cameroon, Botswana and Madagascar.
• Orange has minority interests in Italy, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Thailand and Mumbai (India).
• Orange now offers roaming on 249 networks in 113 countries
• In May 2001, for the fourth consecutive year, the J.D. Power and Associates study on the UK mobile market ranks Orange number one for customer satisfaction
• Information about Orange can be found on the Orange website at www.orange.co.uk and media information can be found at www.media.orange.net.

About Lernout & Hauspie

L&H is a global leader in advanced speech and language solutions for vertical markets, computers, automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the Internet. The company is making the speech user interface (SUI) the keystone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and technology, and is using advanced translation technology to break down language barriers. The company provides a wide range of offerings, including: customized solutions for corporations; core speech technologies marketed to OEMs; end user and retail applications for continuous speech products in horizontal and vertical markets; and document creation, human and machine translation services, Internet translation offerings, and linguistic tools. L&H's products and services originate in four basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), search and retrieval and audio mining and text-to-text (translation). For more information, please visit L&H on the World Wide Web at www.lhsl.com.