Paris, France, December 07, 2015

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) will expand the deployment of its 7950 XRS IP Core Router with China Unicom to meet high-traffic demand in nine Chinese cities, while enabling the operator prepare its network for continuing high data growth.

Densely populated cities - served by metro networks – are experiencing huge increases in Internet data center traffic as more consumers and businesses demand high-bandwidth cloud-based video services. China Unicom is aiming to ensure its metro networks can meet the surging capacity demands of a growing base of more than 400 million fixed and mobile broadband subscribers into the future.

Alcatel-Lucent is deploying the 7950 XRS IP Core Router in nine cities within the Jiangsu, Shandong, Jiangxi, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia provinces. This will provide China Unicom with a more flexible, intelligent network that offers the scalability and capacity to meet future traffic demands, allowing it to deliver on the goals of the National China Broadband Plan. Deployment will be completed toward the end of 2016.

Key Facts :

• Alcatel-Lucent is deploying its 7950 XRS IP Core Router within the 14 metro network nodes of nine cities in China. The possibility to evolve to 400G interfaces in its metro backbone network using the 7950 XRS will allow China Unicom to meet the upcoming customer data demand and pave the way for the future expansion of high-quality cloud-services while optimizing costs.
• Alcatel-Lucent’s 7950 XRS portfolio delivers class-leading scale, efficiency and versatility to address a wide range of networking requirements. The XRS is deployed in over 50 networks worldwide.
• This agreement expands on Alcatel-Lucent’s 2014 announcement of its selection as the supplier for the China Unicom 2014 IP metro network core router central bid.
• The China Broadband Plan aims to provide broadband access to all urban and rural areas in the country by 2020 with a minimum of 50 Mbps in urban areas and 12 Mbps in rural areas.

Quote :

YUAN Xin, Chairman and CEO of Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell said :

“China is one of the world’s telecommunications markets and demand for broadband is exploding, particularly in high-traffic metro networks. We are proud our IP core routing technology plays an increasingly important role in helping China Unicom build out its next generation core network to meet this demand.”