Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent look set to pick up the first big contracts from Singapore’s S$1 billion ($708.7 million) NBN projects.
The two vendors are slated to appear at a function next Tuesday to be held by StarHub subsidiary Nucleus Connect, which will unveil their role in supporting Nucleus’ operations.
Nucleus holds the Singapore government’s “OpCo” contract, which StarHub won in April. The government will tip S$250 million into the company, which will buy dark fiber from the SingTel-backed OpenNet and wholesale it to ISPs.
It is not clear which technologies will be deployed. IDA officials have said Nucleus would use GPON for its minimum 1Gbps per household rollout, but a Nucleus spokesperson declined to confirm this.
Alcatel-Lucent is the global leader in GPON, according to Infonetics, and has won a major slice of China Telecom GPON trials.
OpenNet, which has the lion’s share of the government funding, has yet to issue any network expansion tenders.