18 October 2002 -- Agere Systems, Ascot, UK, has announced a "multi-million dollar deal" with Huawei Technologies, a leading network equipment supplier in China. Huawei will purchase a full suite of Agere's integrated circuits for high-speed optical networking systems for metropolitan and access networks.
Agere will provide chips for line cards, which handle multiple networking protocols, channels, reaches and rates in optical transport systems. Huawei, which claims to be the fastest growing equipment supplier in the world, is deploying its optical systems in networks across Asia, Europe, Africa and South America.
"Huawei has proven its ability to bring high-speed, low-cost networking to the metro and access segments as the fastest growing equipment provider," said Mark Granahan, vice president for access and transport products at Agere Systems. "The Agere solutions will help Huawei provide systems to their customers that enable new services at the lowest initial and ongoing cost."
A recent RHK report ranked Huawei No. 1 in the Asia-Pacific market with 15.4 percent market share in optical transport products in 2001. RHK has also defined China as the largest telecom market in the Asia-Pacific market in 2002 and is expected to continue to be the largest until at least 2006. Huawei's sales outside China surged 156% last year.
Pin-An Zhang, Huawei's senior vice president and general manager of the company's optical networking division, said, "Huawei was seeking a long-term strategic partner in the industry to provide transport solutions to help us co-develop the worldwide market.
"Agere came out on top by offering low cost, highly reliable and feature-rich solutions that dramatically shorten the time-to-market for our Optix(tm) 2.5G, 10G SDH and Optix(tm) Metro Systems." Huawei plans to conduct field trials of equipment using Agere's products with leading international telecom carriers.