China Mobile Selects Nortel to Upgrade Zhejiang Optical Backbone

China Mobile, the world's largest GSM carrier in terms of subscriber numbers with 210.62 million subscribers, selected Nortel to upgrade its optical backbone network in Zhejiang province to address accelerating subscriber growth and prepare for migration to 3G. Zhejiang Mobile, a provincial affiliate of China Mobile, operates the province-wide network. Two Nortel optical platforms - Optical Cross Connect HDX Multiservice Switch and Optical Multiservice Edge (OME) 6500 - are being deployed in Zhejiang Mobile's provincial backbone network to optimize its existing network and increase network bandwidth in cost-effective increments. Financial terms were not disclosed.


The upgrade will include two Optical Cross Connect HDX switches as Hub nodes to be configured as multiple rings to optimize the backbone network. Nortel HDX cross connect capacity is scalable beyond one Terabit per second. In the Zhejiang Mobile deployment, the HDX will be provisioned initially at 640 Gbps. Nortel said the current HDX platform is also ready to support ASTN (Automatically Switched Transport Network) application through a system upgrade.


Similarly, the OME 6500 for Zhejiang Mobile will be used as a high-density service aggregator subtended under the Optical Connect HDX switch. OME 6500 is able to provide next generation Layer two switching functions to support various kinds of Ethernet services. The VC12/VC3/VC4 cross connect capacity enables operators to deliver any future broadband voice, video and data 'triple play' services including IPTV.
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