Alcatel-Lucent has scooped the first major contract in the Australian government’s next-gen broadband project.
The vendor has won a A$70 million ($60.6 million) contract to provide GPON and Ethernet aggregration equipment to the state-owned carrier NBN Co.
Further deals could be in the pipeline for the vendor, since NBN Co has committed to spending up to A$1.5 billion on GPON and Ethernet aggregation equipment, Alcatel-Lucent said.
“The contract with Alcatel-Lucent allows NBN Co to purchase what it needs when it needs it, and allows NBN Co to engage other suppliers at a later date of our choosing,” NBN Co's head of corporate services, Kevin Brown, told Australian tech news serviceIT Wire.
Brown said that NBN CEO Mike Quigley and CFO Jean-Pascal Beaufret – both former senior Alcatel-Lucent executives – did not participate in the tender decision.
NBN Co plans to roll out a 100Mbps fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) network to 90% of Australian premises over the next eight years.
Telstra signed a Heads of Agreement with NBN Co. last Sunday to migrate its fixed-line infrastructure and customers to the company.
MORE ARTICLES ON ALCATEL-LUCENT, AUSTRALIA-NBN, NBN CO