China Telecom, the largest fixed line broadband provider in China, has selected Alcatel-Lucent to upgrade its network with 100Gbps capability.

The improved network will enable China Telecom to carry out its plan to deliver speeds of up to 100Gbps to subscribers, a first for a service provider in China.

Alcatel-Lucent said the network would be built out using its 7750 Service Routers and 5620 Service Aware Manager, which are key components of the joint venture’s High Leverage Network architecture. The new network infrastructure will enable China Telecom to improve network performance and support tiered data provision based on the type of traffic moving over the network.

Explaining the move, Wei Leping, chairman of China Telecom science & technology committee said in a statement that, “with the continuously booming broadband demand in the future, it’s very crucial to maintain the network quality for smoothly delivering the applications. The Alcatel-Lucent solutions not only ensure our service quality but also give us the flexibility to upgrade to 100G smoothly in the future.”

In other news, Alcatel-Lucent has been forced to set aside $15m for the 2010 financial year for “additional provisions”, to account for retrofits to faulty networks, most of which will be related to the outages experience in late 2009 and early 2010 by New Zealand operator Telecom XT.