Alcatel-Lucent selected for 'Broadband China, Fibre Cities' project

China Telecom has selected Alcatel-Lucent to provide a range of technology solutions for its project to deliver fibre optic broadband services to many unserved or underserved areas of the country.

The project is called ‘Broadband China, Fibre Cities’ and will involve the deployment of a mix of passive optical networking (PON) technologies connecting homes, office buildings and remote ‘nodes’ which can then distribute the broadband signals to multiple locations over existing copper wires.

Alcatel-Lucent is to supply its Intelligence Services Access Manager (ISAM) product family, which supports GPON, EPON and DSL technologies and enables Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH), Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) and Fibre-to-the-Building (FTTB) deployment models.

Following the deployment, China Telecom will be able to offer subscribers a range of consumer and business services including IPTV, video-on-demand, voice over IP (VoIP) and more at speeds of up to 50 Mbps, all with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) levels.

Wei Leping, Chairman of China Telecom Science & Technology Committee, said: “China Telecom launched ‘Broadband China, Fibre Cities’ strategy at the beginning of 2011, which aims to realise optical network coverage in all the cities in three years. By 2015, China Telecom will achieve a FTTH coverage of 100 million households and 30 million FTTH subscribers.”

The project is described as a central element of China Telecom’s plan to extend its FTTH coverage to 100 million users by the end of China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).