China Telecom has signed a number of contracts with Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell in order to implement a fibre-optic broadband access network across all Chinese cities in the next three years.
Part of China’s twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011–15), the move aims to extend FTTH coverage to 100 million users across the nation. China Telecom also aims to bring “blazingly fast” broadband services – up to 50Mbps – to over 26 million people in China this year.
“By 2015, China Telecom will achieve a FTTH coverage of 100 million households and 30 million FTTH subscribers,” said Wei Leping, chairman of China Telecom’s science and technology committee.
In addition, China Telecom has awarded Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell the contract to deliver the first commercial deployment of IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) technology, which will provide multimedia services to 120 million subscribers in Shanghai, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Xinjiang and Sichuan provinces.
In a separate move, the Chinese carrier has launched its first end-to-end 100G wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system in collaboration with Huawei. The WDM system connects the economic and business centres of Nanjing and Wuxi in the Jiangsu province of the Yangtze River Delta. Huawei said that the successful transmission of the 100G service will increase capacity of the live network by up to 2.5 times, reaching 100Gbps per channel.
China Telecom’s domestic competitor China Unicom has also had an active month after announcing that Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) will be deploying a 5,000km fibre-optic network capable of 40Gbps per channel.
The network will cover seven provinces: Chongqing, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi. It will also pave the way for future upgrades to 100Gbps technology, as China Unicom prepares for the anticipated growth in IP traffic.
“Our 40G DWDM system will ensure a longer life cycle for China Unicom’s network by increasing its network capacity to handle data traffic growth,” said Markus Borchert, head of greater China region at NSN.
