The deal stipulates deployment of LTE infrastructure in 12 Chinese provinces
China Telecom awarded a contract to Alcatel-Lucent to expand the deployment of LTE infrastructure across 12 provinces of China.
The Chinese telco aims to expand its LTE network and increase capacity to handle growing consumer demand. Alcatel-Lucent said the contract also stipulates the deployment of carrier aggregation capability in major cities. This component of the LTE-Advanced standard allows LTE radios to combine multiple frequency bands to vastly increase data speeds and lower latency.
The French vendor said it expects to complete the deployment this month, in which it will deploy its 9926 ENodeB LTE radio access technology in 12 provinces of China, while introducing LTE-A carrier aggregation capabilities for LTE FDD in major cities for the first time in China.
“This agreement continues a long working relationship with China Telecom and further extends our leadership in mobile ultra-broadband access. As data demand continues to rise in the country, we are determined to help China Telecom meet customers’ increasing demand for top-quality services,” Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell’s CEO Yuan Xin said.
China Telecom ended the third quarter of the year with 43.7 million LTE subscribers, bolstered by 36.6 million net LTE subscriber additions during the first three quarters of the year.
In related news, Alcatel-Lucent announced it is deploying its 7950 XRS IP Core Router and 7750 Service Router to manage China Telecom’s growing data center demands in Beijing and Guangzhou. The 7950 XRS, already in use in Jiangsu province and Shanghai, will manage traffic in the urban data centers of Beijing as well as the financial hub of Guangzhou. Alcatel-Lucent’s 7750 Service Router will be deployed across seven major provinces.
Alcatel-Lucent said it expects to complete these deployments in December.
