In an effort to support the 'Broadband China' initiative, China's program to deliver high-speed broadband to more than 250 million homes by 2015, Alcatel-Lucent is helping to increase the capacity and reach of China Telecom's (News - Alert) fiber optic data network.

Specifically, the agreement between the two companies will see Alcatel-Lucent increasing the capacity of China Telecom's optical transport network, while expanding it to reach all of China's major cities. As such, the network operator will be able to reach more customers, both business and residential, with its fixed-line broadband access network. Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) will also help increase the availability of both 3G and Wi-Fi wireless broadband access throughout the country.

"Chinese consumers and businesses are demanding increasingly sophisticated services requiring more and more bandwidth," said Rajeev Singh-Molares, president of Asia Pacific for Alcatel-Lucent. "As importantly, China has set aggressive targets to expand broadband availability to underserved segments of the society. Our optical technology will enable China Telecom to address these critical demands cost-effectively today, and lay the groundwork for the future expansion and acceleration of their network to support 100G transport in the future."

China Telecom also has plans to deploy 100G service throughout China "in the coming years," he added, and that Alcatel-Lucent will be on hand to offer "advanced solutions and extensive experience" in order to accomplish this goal.

The company will supply China Telecom with its 100G-ready converged OTN/WDM technology employed in the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) and the Photonic Service Engine (PSE) chip, allowing the operator to support a combination of 10G, 40G and 100G channels on the same fiber pair.

Recently, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled a new operating model focused on core products, a strengthened sales organization and reshaped corporate functions as part of its Performance Program, a strategic initiative first announced in July that aims to save billions of dollars by the end of 2013.

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