China Unicom Awards $120 Million In CDMA Contracts To Lucent

Lucent Technologies has received more than $120 million in contracts from China Unicom to build out CDMA networks in four regions -- Shandong, Hubei, Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi.

The contracts call for Lucent to supply gear, software and services to beef up the coverage and capacity of China Unicom's existing network and to position the service provider for 3G deployments.

"Lucent will supply CDMA2000 1X equipment, including base stations and switches, that will increase voice capacity and enable China Unicom to deliver a variety of value-added mobile high-speed data services such as video-on-demand, video streaming and high-speed Internet access to more subscribers," the New Jersey-based firm said in a statement.

China Unicom, which has been working with Lucent since May 2001 on its CDMA network, provides service to more than 23 million subscribers. Lucent said its CDMA2000 solutions are able to protect existing infrastructure while at the same time evolving to support higher-speed 3G data services.

Lucent is expanding its operations in China and its Lucent China unit has eight regional offices, two Bell Labs branches, and five R & D facilities in the Asian country, the company said. The firm has about 3,000 employees in China.