Alcatel-Lucent lands core router deals with China Mobile, China Unicom

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is continuing its core router tour of China with the announcement that it will supply its 7950 XRS IP Core Router to China Mobile for the service provider's CMNET national IP backbone network as well as to China Unicom for deployment in nine Chinese cities. These two announcements follow an earlier reveal of a 7950 XRS deployment by China Telecom (see "China Telecom selects IP core and edge routers from Alcatel-Lucent").

China Mobile will employ the 7950 XRS to meet bandwidth demands that are expected to reach 180 terabits by 2017 and 500 terabits by 2020. The carrier already had selected the core router for use in its Ethernet network in 2014 (see "Alcatel-Lucent lands IP core router deals with CenturyLink, China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile").

The China Unicom deployment is for metro networks in the nine cities within the Jiangsu, Shandong, Jiangxi, Qinghai, and Inner Mongolia provinces. It also is a follow-on order from a previous agreement, as detailed in the 2014 article cited above.

In both instances it appears the service providers will install the 7950 XRS with 100-Gbps interfaces at the top end. Alcatel-Lucent notes that the systems offer "the possibility to evolve to a 400G Ethernet interface" to meet future capacity needs. The deployments for both carriers should be completed toward the end of 2016.

Alcatel-Lucent also has signed framework agreements with China Mobile and China Unicom for the service providers' Broadband China initiatives (see "Alcatel-Lucent wins Broadband China framework deals with China Mobile and China Unicom").

For more information on core routers and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.