French telecoms vendor Alcatel-Lucent announced the deployment of its 7950 XRS IP core router in the China Mobile national IP backbone network and metro networks.
The equipment provider affirmed that this deployment will enable the Asian operator to meet the growing demand for data in the coming years due to the adoption of 4G LTE services and cloud-based video services, as well as increasing application of the Internet of Things.
To prepare for this growth into the next decade, China Mobile aims to simplify its network structure and optimize costs. This latest development is an expansion of Alcatel-Lucent’s 7950 XRS core router deployment in China Mobile’s Ethernet network. Alcatel-Lucent said that the deployment will be completed by the end of 2016.
“This contract continues our strategic collaboration with China Mobile in the IP domain. Leveraging the XRS core technology in its IP backbone network will enable China Mobile to meet the evolving demands of its rapidly growing subscriber base,” Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell’s Chairman and CEO Yuan Xing said. “The application of our IP edge portfolio will strengthen both China Mobile’s backhaul capabilities and drive new capacity in the metro networks to meet the next decade of demand.”
Alcatel-Lucent also highlighted that the deployment will help the Chinese operator to meet its goals under the China Broadband Plan. This initiative aims to provide broadband access to all urban and rural areas by 2020 with a minimum of 50 Mbps in urban areas and 12 Mbps in rural areas.
China Mobile ended October with almost 824 million subscribers, according to the operator’s website. 4G subscribers totaled 267.3 million.
Huawei deploys AAU solution for China Unicom
In related APAC news, Chinese ICT solutions provider Huawei and Chinese mobile operator China Unicom have announced that the Huawei Active Antenna Unit solution will be commercially deployed in China’s Xinjiang Province to build out China Unicom’s mobile broadband network.
Huawei’s AAU solution supports both 3G and 4G networks. Its radio function evolved from 3G to 4G without additional hardware investment, so that mobile operators can quickly launch LTE carrier aggregation on 1800 MHz and 2.1 GHz.
Huawei’s AAU solution has been deployed by 70 operators in China, Europe, Canada, Russia, as well as countries in the Middle East and South America.
