The announcement comes as the carrier is engaged in a large scale FTTH deployment as part of the Chinese government’s Broadband China programme, which aims to provide high-speed broadband to 250 million households in urban and rural locations by 2015.
Telecoms vendor Alcatel-Lucent has secured the contract for the network through its local subsidiary Shanghai Bell. The company said that the deployment will enable China Telecom to deploy 100Gbps Ethernet technology in a future upgrade.
In May it was also announced that Alcatel-Lucent would expand China Telecom’s broadband access network to boost the company’s capacity and service capabilities.
“Alcatel-Lucent is proud to be making such an important contribution to China Telecom’s plans and to the ‘Broadband China’ strategy, a contribution which also strongly reflects the key role China plays in our own global presence,” said Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent.
The Broadband China programme aims to connect 35 million families via FTTH with speeds of 4Mbps and above by the end of 2012, and 20 million new households with access to fixed broadband. The programme has the goal of connecting 800 million users by 2015, including 200 in rural locations.
