Alcatel Sells 1M DSL Lines in China

PARIS -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA), the world leader in broadband solutions, has secured several significant expansion contracts to supply Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) solutions in China. With these contracts, Alcatel will register orders for 1 million DSL lines in China this month alone. The contracts were won through Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel's flagship Chinese company and the Chinese leader in broadband solutions.

This includes contracts to supply 920,000 DSL lines to the China Telecom Group. Under the contracts, Alcatel will provide the DSL lines to China Telecom subsidiaries in 18 provinces and municipalities in southern China including Shanghai, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian and Anhui. When completed by end of this year, China Telecom's DSL network capacity and services provisioning will be significantly enhanced. This solution includes the Alcatel 7300 Advanced Services Access Manager (ASAM), the world's most widely deployed broadband access platform. It will be managed by the highly scalable, multi-technology 5523 Alcatel ADSL Workstation (AWS) Element Management System. Alcatel's advanced and high-performance DSLAM solutions are already widely deployed in China Telecom's networks.

China Telecom is the major supplier of broadband services in southern China. The number of its ADSL subscribers has increased exponentially from tens of thousands in 2000 to 2.7 million currently. As the company that introduced DSL solutions in China and the market leader, Alcatel started its close cooperation with China Telecom in 1997 and holds close to 40 percent market share worldwide.

Alcatel Shanghai Bell is one of Alcatel's two global DSL R&D centers. Its intensive R&D in DSL ensures that customers will always enjoy the latest technology to offer value-added services to broadband users.

Alcatel SA