Alcatel Wins China Buildout

PARIS -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) announced today that it has completed the deployment of China's largest intelligent optical metro network for Beijing Netcom, a subsidiary of China Netcom. Already carrying multimedia traffic, the new network will serve as the key communication platform for delivery of new, multimedia services to end-users across the city of Beijing.

As a result, residential and enterprise customers will be able to enjoy major events and activities via high quality broadband services offered over an advanced network infrastructure. The project was managed and implemented by Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel's Chinese flagship company.

The network is the first commercial application of its kind in China and already delivers a wide array of reliable Ethernet, as well as other multimedia services, to Beijing Netcom's end-users. User centric service delivery – including carrier-class metro Ethernet services, high-speed Internet access, optical VPN, IPTV, Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) and leased-line services – as well as Storage Area Network (SAN) applications, are provisioned in a fast, flexible and reliable way.

"A reliable and high-capacity communication infrastructure is of key importance to the enrichment of communication services in Beijing," said Zhao Jidong, Senior Vice President of China Netcom and General Manager of Beijing Netcom. "Alcatel's advanced intelligent optical networking solution has empowered our network infrastructure to deliver all kinds of innovative, multimedia services and to bring major events and activities like Olympic Games to every end-user."

"The network completion helps Beijing Netcom rely on state-of-the-art technologies that enable fast, efficient and reliable broadband services via fixed network terminals or mobile handsets," said Romano Valussi, president of Alcatel's optical networking activities. "This project further demonstrates Alcatel's ability and expertise in intelligent optical metro networks which require impressive network availability and capacity to deliver mission-critical services."

Alcatel