Alcatel Draws Four Aces: MAN, DSL, IPTV & GSM
TELECOMWEB NEWS DIGEST
August 3, 2005
Alcatel, in the space of barely 24 hours, has disclosed a string of
broadband and wireless contract wins at carriers in Belgium, China,
Armenia and Egypt plus a deal with Israel’s Amdocs to craft a joint
end-to-end IPTV solution. The first of the deals cover DSL, where
Alcatel claims 37.8 percent of the global DSL market, with more than
68 million DSL lines shipped at the end of the second quarter of 2005.
In Belgium, it signed a key broadband deal with fixed and mobile
operator Mobistar to help it roll out DSL infrastructure. Mobistar
currently derives the majority of its revenues from mobile – about $772
million of the company’s $834.3 million in total revenues for the first
half of this year. Its decision to team with Alcatel indicates that it
wants to become more of a force away from its core mobile market, where
it has a 33-percent share with nearly 2.9 million customers. Mobistar,
which hopes to put pressure on Belgacom in all areas of the Belgian
telecom market, recently launched a pilot TV-on-mobile project,
which will run from July to September.
Mobistar is buying Alcatel’s 7301 Advanced Services Access Manager,
managed by the Alcatel 5523 ADSL Work Station, and the Alcatel
5530 Network Analyzer, Michel Rahier, head of Alcatel’s fixed
communications activities, said of the deal, “Mobistar’s entry into
the fixed broadband business moves them toward a one-stop- shop model,
which we see as a clear trend in many advanced markets. Being already
the supplier of Mobistar’s mobile core network, we are extremely happy
to now contribute to the development of its fixed broadband business.”
In a second DSL deal, Alcatel inked a frame contract to supply Nile
Online, an Egyptian ISP said to have one of the largest Internet
backbones in the country, with the hardware and installation services
for 30,000 DSL lines during the next year. The deal reinforces
Alcatel’s already commanding position in the Egyptian broadband market,
where it claims a 60-percent market share.
Under the terms of the contract, Alcatel will supply Nile Online
with its Alcatel 7302 Integrated Services Access Manager (ISAM),
which hit the market nearly a year ago. Alcatel says the order is
its first for the 7302 from a Middle Eastern country, and that Nile
Online is its 11th customer worldwide for the widgetry.
Meanwhile, in China, Hubei Telecom, a subsidiary of China Telecom,
ordered Alcatel’s IP service routing solution to expand and optimize
its metropolitan area network (MAN) in Hubei Province, China. The
contract, won by Alcatel Shanghai Bell, calls for deployment of the
Alcatel 7750 Service Router (SR) in the province’s three major cities:
Wuhan, Yichang and Huanggang.
The order continues Alcatel’s relationship with China Telecom, which
has already installed the 7750 in 11 other Chinese provinces. China
Telecom says its upgraded network in Hubei is going to be used to
deliver services including a bundled triple- play offering, high-speed
Internet access for residential users, and Layer 2 and Layer 3 virtual
private network (VPN) services for enterprises.
Meanwhile, on the wireless side, Alcatel disclosed landing what was
described as a “multimillion Euro” contract to deploy a GSM/GPRS mobile
network for VivaCell, the second mobile operator in Armenia. Alcatel,
which partnered in the project with Greek telecommunications integrator
Intracom, actually won the contract some time ago, but waited until
the gear was deployed to disclose it.
Under the terms of the contract, Alcatel deployed a complete GSM
network based on its multi-standard Evolium solution. Alcatel’s
solution, which will cover the whole territory of Armenia, will
include Mobile Switching Centers for 400,000 subscribers, more than 200
base-station subsystems with natively embedded GPRS capabilities, and
a backbone based on Alcatel’s next-generation SDH Optical Multi-Service
Node systems and access network.
In a final deal, Alcatel and Amdocs crafted a pact to integrate
Amdocs’ IP Convergence Solution software for IPTV with Alcatel’s IPTV
infrastructure offerings. The two say they have immediately begun
development of an interoperability lab that will simulate real-world
production environments, including the infrastructure, full broadband
access network, switching, routing, transport and applications. The
two companies also will create a joint architectural map-and-service
offering, and they are planning joint sales and marketing efforts.