China Mobile and China Unicom go all-in on Alcatel-Lucent infrastructure

An agreement signed between three parties will see giant operators China Mobile and China Unicom turn to Alcatel-Lucent for a hefty chunk of new infrastructure levying NFV, Cloud and SDN.

Tim Skinner

July 3, 2015

2 Min Read
Fibre Optic Network Broadband Super Fast Optical

An agreement signed between three parties will see giant operators China Mobile and China Unicom turn to Alcatel-Lucent for a hefty chunk of new infrastructure levying NFV, Cloud and SDN.

The agreement is worth more than €1.1bn to the French kit vendor, which means it will be providing mobile and fixed ultra-broadband access, IP routing, optical networking as well as NFV and SDN. The deal has apparently been expedited in order to comply with the ‘Broadband China’ initiative launched by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Broadband China is targeting ubiquitous 100mbps+ download speeds based on fibre networks for all of the country’s municipalities, cities and non-urban households by 2017. On top of that, China also expects full 4G mobile coverage and access in urban and rural areas in the same time frame.

“This announcement is highly significant as it furthers Alcatel-Lucent’s role as a key technology provider in China and aligns perfectly with our strategy of bringing high-speed ultra-broadband access to open up new opportunities for both service providers and their customers alike,” said Alcatel-Lucent’s CEO Michel Combes. “We are very pleased to continue working with both China Mobile and China Unicom to help them deliver on their commitments under the Broadband China initiative.”

Meanwhile, China Mobile’s VP is looking forward to a migration towards cloud networks. “We have been working closely with Alcatel-Lucent on the development of technologies to help the smooth transition to cloud networks,” he said. “We are pleased to continue this collaboration and under this agreement we can benefit from Alcatel-Lucent’s leading solutions to help us expand connectivity across the company and enable new efficiencies across out network.”

The agreement between the three parties will see Alcatel-Lucent provide the following.

  • 4G TD-LTE and LTE FDD mobile ultra-broadband access

  • Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) and Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPON) fixed ultra-broadband access

  • Optical transport network and private telecommunications network (PTN) data transmission

  • IP routing and switching technologies

  • Voice over LTE (VoLTE)

  • NFV cloud technologies

  • Nuage Networks SDN

About the Author

Tim Skinner

Tim is the features editor at Telecoms.com, focusing on the latest activity within the telecoms and technology industries – delivering dry and irreverent yet informative news and analysis features.

Tim is also host of weekly podcast A Week In Wireless, where the editorial team from Telecoms.com and their industry mates get together every now and then and have a giggle about what’s going on in the industry.

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