China Telecom has contracted Alcatel-Lucent to help it meet its goal of passing 100 million households with fiber by 2015.
Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell - the vendor's Chinese subsidiary - will provide access management equipment for China Telecom's “Broadband China, Fiber Cities” project. The initiative aims to combine PON technologies with remote nodes connected via existing copper wires.
China Telecom said it plans to pass 26 million homes with high-speed broadband this year, deploy optical networks in all China's cities within three years, and have 30 million FTTH subscribers by 2015.
Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell simultaneously announced it had won a deal to upgrade China Telecom's networks in five provinces with IMS.
The contract involves implementing IMS in Shanghai, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Xinjiang and Sichuan. The operator has followed up on trials of the technology in Shanghai and Shandong with plans for what it says is its first major deployment of the technology.