Alcatel inks Jiangsu Netcom deal |
http://www.sina.com.cn 2004/12/29 11:12 Shanghai Daily |
Alcatel Shanghai Bell Co, a joint venture between Alcatel SA and Shanghai government, announced yesterday in Nanjing that it has helped Jiangsu Netcom, a subsidiary of China Netcom, to launch commercially the next generation network-based services. NGN technology, which allows telecom operators to offer a wide variety of advanced services, including video conferencing, video streaming and virtual private networking, would be used on a large scale in China next year, industry insiders said. According to the deal, Alcatel will provide Jiangsu Netcom 500,000 NGN lines allowing the operator to provide related services to business customers. Thirteen cities in Jiangsu Province including Changzhou, Nanjing and Wuxi, will be covered. The Jiangsu government bureaus became the first NGN customers of Jiangsu Netcom. "We will mainly provide NGN lines to operators in the backbone and long-distance sectors to help them boost their competitive advantages," said Gerard Dega, Alcatel Shanghai Bell's president. Alcatel Shanghai Bell's sales have reached more than 1 million NGN lines in China in 2004, accounting for 22 percent share of the domestic NGN market. The number is expected to "double or probably triple" next year, according to Dega. "That will help Chinese fixed-line operators to boost their profit especially since their traditional voice business is growing slowly," said Liu Shumin, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting Co Ltd, a research firm under the Ministry of Information Industry. China's NGN market is still in its infancy but it will grow rapidly once the country issues third-generation licenses, which is expected in the middle of next year, CCID said. Currently, Alcatel Shanghai Bell, along with Nortel Network, Cisco and homegrown Huawei Technologies and ZTE, dominate the Chinese NGN market. Alcatel Shanghai Bell has signed NGN deals with China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Netcom. |