Optical Networking News

China Telecom to Accelerate FTTH and Mobile Rollouts

Citing continued mobile and landline broadband growth, China Telecom reported a 4.9% growth in revenues to RMB 107,552 million and a 4.7% growth in net profit for the first half of 2010 compared to a year earlier. Profit attributable to equity holders of the Company was RMB8,811 million, representing an increase of 4.7% from the same period of last year. Robust earnings trajectory marked a good start of the result improvement. Basic earnings per share was RMB0.109. Capital expenditure was RMB17,918 million, an increase of 5.2% over the same period of last year. Free cash flow reached RMB18,591 million.

Some highlights from the first half of 2010

China Telecom added 18.43 million mobile subscribers in the first half of the year, giving it a total of 74.52 million, of which 7.18 million were 3G subscribers. This puts the company's share of the mobile market in China at close to 10%, which is double from 2008. Mobile ARPU declined slightly to RMB 58.1 for 1H2010 vs RMB 59.5 in FY2009. The company is currently supporting over 700 CDMA handset models, with over available for 3G.

Revenue from non-voice services as a percentage of the operating revenues further increased to 56.3%, amongst which wireline broadband access revenue attributed to 24.5% of the operating revenues.

In broadband, China Telecom continues to hold the leading market share. In the first half of 2010, there was a net addition of 4.87 million wireline broadband customers, giving the company a total of 58.33 million broadband lines. More than 60% of the company's CAPEX in 1H2010 was focused on broadband expansion.

For traditional land lines, China Telecom recorded a net loss of 7.61 million PAS subscribers, leaving it with 181 million access lines in service at the end of June this year.

Looking ahead, China Telecom said its strategy will focus on sustainable development of four pillars -- mobile, broadband, wireline voice, and valued-added and integrated information services.

China Telecom will accelerate it broadband network upgrades, especially FTTH. In city areas, its network currently is capable of 4 Mbps and above with 44% coverage at 20 Mbps or more. For its 2010 budget, CAPEX will be increased by RMB 5 billion over previous guidance to RMB 44 billion. For 2011, the CAPEX budget will be increased by a further RMB 10 billion, although final budget figures will be updated with regard to business activity.

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Colt Deploys Infinera in Low-Latency European Backbone

Colt has deployed Infinera's optical networking systems to support low latency services on its next generation pan-European network.

Colt is now offering services with a measured latency of 4.22 milliseconds between London and Frankfurt and 2.65 milliseconds between Paris and Brussels.

Infinera said its low-latency solutions are engineered to provide significantly lower latency than conventional DWDM solutions through the use of innovative optics and electronics that drive latency out of the optical network. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"We've worked closely with Colt to customize a solution to deliver the lowest possible latency to the Colt network," said Infinera vice president for network strategy Chris Liou.... > More

AppliedMicro to Acquire TPACK for Emerging OTN

AppliedMicro agreed to acquire TPACK A/S, a developer of programmable chip solutions for packet transport networks, for $32 million in cash plus up to $5 million in cash earn-outs depending on performance milestones over the next eighteen months.

TPACK, which is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, offers a "SOFTSILICON" solution implemented in Altera FPGA devices. The SOFTSILICON products are used in 10, 40 and 100 Gbps OTN switching and routing network equipment. Its silicon intellectual property (IP) for mapping and switching functions enable rapid time-to-market for Optical Transport Network (OTN) and Carrier Ethernet markets. Carrier Ethernet, in particular, has become TPACK's speciality whether it is transported over Ethernet, MPLS, VPLS, PWE3, PBT/PBB-TE, T-MPLS, SONET/SDH, PDH or OTN.

Founded in 2001, TPACK has 37 employees, including 28 design engineers, and brings a track record of innovative product development and steady financial growth as a privately-held company. Following the acquisition closing, the company will continue to operate from its Copenhagen office as a wholly-owned subsidiary of AppliedMicro.

AppliedMicro said that as OTN standards evolve and mature, it will use the early engagement work with customers and develop standard reference designs that maintain software compatibility while offering lower cost and lower power.

"While the OTN silicon market is growing rapidly, OTN standards and implementations are still evolving-- thereby offering system OEMs a broad field to uniquely differentiate their products with custom features and legacy support at various levels. This has led a large proliferation of FPGA technology within our customers' platforms. These FPGA solutions sit beside our products and together provide a scalable, system solution for our customers," said George Jones, Head of Marketing and Business Development for Transport products at AppliedMicro.... > More

Hong Kong's PCCW Deploys Huawei's 40G OTN

PCCW, Hong Kong's incumbent telecom provider, has deployed Huawei's OTN (optical transport network) solution to enable higher bandwidth and more flexible service grooming features. Financial terms were not disclosed.

PCCW's 40G OTN network will adopt a series of state-of-the-art technologies, including 80-wavelength 40G, ROADM (Reconfiguration Optical Add/drop Multiplexer), and optical and electrical cross-connection and grooming. These elements allow bandwidth per wavelength to increase by 400% and total transport capacity to jump to 3.2 Tbps, enabling the transmission of 700 DVD files per second. The network also enhances the transmission capabilities of bandwidth-hungry services, due to optical and electrical cross-connection technologies. ... > More

Level 3 Wins Networx Contract for Social Security Administration

The U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) has chosen Level 3 Communications to provide wavelength services under the Networx Enterprise contract program. Under the contract, Level 3 will provide the SSA with multiple 10 Gbps wavelengths to connect several of the SSA's data center locations with the potential to expand to additional sites in the future. ... > More

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