China Telecom and ZTE sign PON equipment contract

CommunicAsia2010, SINGAPORE & SHENZHEN, CHINA: ZTE Corp. has won a large Passive Optical Network (PON) equipment contract from China Telecom valued at over CNY 1 billion.

ZTE’s PON equipment will support China’s Telecom’s City Optical Network project which was launched in 2009 with the aim of providing customers with higher speed broadband access to enhance their user experience.

Under the contract, ZTE will provide its ZXA10 xPON passive access system to China Telecom. The new network solution is based on triple-play service which provides perfect multicast and DBA capabilities and supports high broadband subscriber access services such as HSI, VoIP, IPTV, and CATV.

As a global telecommunications operator and the largest broadband operator in China, China Telecom maintains a broad strategy to constantly expand, and enhances its broadband services and infrastructure - the City Optical Network project falls under this long-term plan.

Under China Telecom’s plan, approximately 20 million lines of fiber optics broadband equipment will be deployed in order to provide 12Mbps broadband access to more than 70 percent of the rural areas and up to 100Mbps access speeds for major cities across the country. The contract for the xPON equipment was tendered earlier this year and ZTE successfully won the bidding process over other competitors.

ZTE and China Telecom started their business relationship in xPON in 2004 and ZTE’s xPON products has already garnered over 40% market share in China over this six-year relationship. In addition, ZTE helped Shanghai Telecom to complete its own City Optical Network project and deploy a FTTx network in the Shanghai World Expo recently.