China Mobile and China Unicom have both contracted Alcatel-Lucent to provide NFV and IP networking technology to facilitate the transition to cloud-based telecom networks.
Alcatel-Lucent revealed it has secured an agreement from China Mobile worth up to 4.63 billion yuan ($746.5 million) and a deal from Chin Unicom valued at up to 3.59 billion yuan.
Both contracts span a year, and cover the delivery of mobile and fixed high-speed broadband access, IP routing, agile optical networking and NFV technologies.
China Mobile and China Unicom are upgrading their networks in part to support the delivery of the government's Broadband China initiative, which seeks to provide full coverage of the nation's rural and urban areas by 2020.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has set a target of providing all the countries' city districts and municipalities, as well as most non-urban households, with access to 100Mbps fiber by 2017. By this time, the ministry also aims for full 4G access in urban and rural areas.
“We have been working closely with Alcatel-Lucent on the development of technologies to help the smooth transition to cloud networks,” China Mobile vice president Li Huidi said.
“We are pleased to continue this collaboration and under this agreement we can benefit from Alcatel-Lucent’s leading solutions to help us expand connectivity across the company and enable new efficiencies across our network.”