SINGAPORE—Lucent Technologies Inc., L.M. Ericsson, Motorola Inc. and other wireless vendors announced a range of contract wins at the CommunicAsia trade show taking place this week in Singapore.
First up, Lucent announced a new $10 million deal with Telecom New Zealand to upgrade the carrier’s existing CDMA2000 1x EV-DO network to Revision A technology, which the company said would enable new services such as enhanced push-to-talk, multi-player gaming, laptop-based video conferencing and Voice over Internet Protocol.
Lucent boasted that its Rev. A technology supports maximum download, or forward link, speeds of up to 3.1 megabits per second, and upload, or reverse link, speeds of up to 1.8 Mbps.
The company said Rev. A technology would be available in some New Zealand markets by Christmas, with others to follow next year.
Lucent built and manages Telecom New Zealand’s CDMA2000 1x network and upgraded it to EV-DO Revision 0 technology in 2004. As part of the Rev. A project, Lucent Worldwide Services will provide deployment, RF optimization and managed services.
Separately, Lucent said it picked up more than $15 million as part of a deal with KUB-Fujitsu Telecommunications, as the two vendors signed a three-year agreement to deliver optical and access products and services to expand Telekom Malaysia Berhad’s digital data network.
KFT is a subsidiary of KUB Malaysia, a manufacturer of telecommunications products, and Telekom Malaysia Berhad is a regional provider of wireless, fixed-line, data and broadband services.
In the deal, Lucent Worldwide Services will serve as the lead network integrator for the project.
Without disclosing financial terms, ZTE USA Inc. announced it scored a contract to upgrade Jamaican carrier MiPhone’s CDMA2000 network to an all-Internet Protocol EV-DO voice and data network. The Chinese vendor explained that its CDMA2000-based Global Open Trunking Architecture technology, dubbed GoTa, will be deployed in Jamaica.
“ZTE has provided us with a proven and innovative high-performance end-to-end solution that we are very excited about,” said Craig McBurnett, MiPhone’s chief executive officer. “Not only have we chosen a supplier who can offer us the state-of-art EV-DO and push-to-talk solutions we need, but we have found a U.S.-based organization that is a successful global CDMA2000 company to provide the strong local support we require.”
ZTE Corp., which owns ZTE USA, recently announced an agreement to supply third-generation handsets to the Hutchison-owned 3 network in the United Kingdom.
MiPhone launched wireless service in 2001 and currently has more than 100,000 subscribers.
L.M. Ericsson announced it’s been selected by Warid Telecom International L.L.C., Bangladesh, to supply the mobile operator with its real-time charging solution, which will be deployed in its Bangladesh network covering 61 districts. The company said the project is expected to be completed this year.
Motorola Inc. also won a contract with Warid Telecom to deploy a new GSM network in Bangladesh by the end of this year. Warid said it intends to deliver affordable voice and data services to an estimated 5 million new wireless subscribers customers in Bangladesh, covering all major cities and towns by the end of 2006.
Motorola said its just-launched Reach GSM solutions would be deployed in Warid Telecom’s network, which will be upgradeable to EDGE and eventually 3G to deliver media-rich data services. The company said it expects its Reach products to be popular in other emerging markets like India, China, Vietnam and Indonesia where wireless operators face explosive growth in subscribers.
While Motorola did not disclose financial terms of its contract with Warid Telecom, the company pointed out that a portion of the purchase price will be financed by Motorola.
