Lucent Picks Up Chinese Contracts

Lucent Technologies has announced a series of significant agreements with China Unicom and China Telecom with total contract values of more than US$350 million. Under the contracts, Lucent will deliver solutions that lay the foundation for Internet protocol (IP) voice and data services such as high-speed mobile data access, video-on-demand and IP Centrex services.

Under one of the new agreements, Lucent will provide further support for the phase III expansion of China Unicom's CDMA2000 mobile network. With its phase III expansion, initiated this past summer, China Unicom will expand its network capacity to support more than 50 million customers, and offer coverage nationwide. This will enable China Unicom to serve a greater portion of the Chinese market, and also positions the company for the widespread commercial rollout of 3G mobile technology.

The two companies also signed an agreement to supply a multi-service Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) core solution for China Unicom's data backbone based on the joint Lucent Technologies Juniper Networks MPLS Core solution.

The Lucent Juniper Networks MPLS Core solution includes the first announced capability in the industry that allows service providers to automatically create a network path that can deliver guaranteed ATM services end-to-end over an MPLS core network. Deploying this solution will enable China Unicom to offer varying guaranteed levels of service to enterprises on a more cost-effective converged MPLS core network.

China Unicom's national multi-service backbone network is currently the largest multi-service switching network in the world based on technology from Lucent and is the largest convergent transport network in China. The phase IV expansion will support a variety of services in 330 major cities in China.

MPLS is a technology that improves IP network quality. Lucent's MPLS core solution enables the same high quality of service in IP networks as available in today's standard data networks, which use Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) technology."

Posted to the site on 14th January 2004