December 2008 Archives

Alcatel-Lucent Remains a Fixture in Fixed Broadband Access

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 23, 2008 2:24 PM | 0 Comments
According to a report from Alcatel-Lucent, one out of every three fixed broadband subscribers around the world is served through an access network provided by the company.
 
Based on information contained in a recent access report from industry analyst Dell'Oro, Alcatel-Lucent shipped 6.1 million lines in the third quarter of 2008, to maintain its leadership in the DSLAM market (34.9% market share), and growing its worldwide installed base to 180 million lines.
 
Alcatel-Lucent also maintains a market share of 32.6% in IP DSLAM shipments and 34.2% in VDSL shipments.
 
According to Dell'Oro Alcatel-Lucent retained its number two status in the overall PON market and number one for GPON largely due to its role as primary supplier of GPON to Verizon as well as having a number of other deployments in Europe and Asia.

Mendocino County Selects ALU

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 22, 2008 1:53 PM | 0 Comments

Mendocino County is a California county that encompasses an area of more than 2 million acres or approximately 3,500 square miles. The County was looking for an advanced public safety solution, and it selected Alcatel-Lucent to deploy a solution that will enhance network interoperability and emergency response with more reliable and secure communications across multiple agencies within the county.

 

The new network enables Mendocino County to manage its public safety network from a single platform.

 

According to Kristin McMenomey, General Services Agency Director for Mendocino County, "Our goal was to create a network capable of converging traditional mission-critical telecom traffic with the county's data traffic not only to meet our needs today, but also to pave the way for new IP applications in the future."

 

The deployment is based on Alcatel-Lucent's MDR 8000 long-haul microwave solution. Alcatel-Lucent also is deploying its IP/MPLS portfolio, which includes the Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch, Alcatel-Lucent 7250 Service Access Switch and Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager. The company is also providing full turnkey services, such as project management, installation, maintenance, integration, testing, consulting and support services.

 

ALU Enables Blackberry Launch in Vietnam

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 18, 2008 4:10 PM | 0 Comments

Viettel, a leading mobile operator in Vietnam, Alcatel-Lucent and Research In Motion announced the launch of the BlackBerry wireless solution in Vietnam.

 

Under the terms of this agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will provide integration services, leveraging its strong local presence in the region to provide Viettel with end-to-end implementation, launch, delivery and support services for the BlackBerry solution in the Vietnamese market.

 

Alcatel-Lucent's participation thus enables Viettel to focus on the delivery of customer facing services in order to quickly meet market demand.

ALU In TD-SCDMA Pact With China Mobile

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 16, 2008 2:43 PM | 0 Comments
Alcatel-Lucent, through its Chinese flagship company Alcatel Shanghai Bell, has won a significant contract for a TD-SCDMA mobile network trial in China
 
Together with Datang Mobile, Alcatel Lucent announced that they were awarded the largest share in China Mobile's tender for the second phase of its trial to address the growing demand in China for broadband Internet access services on mobile devices.
 
The deployment of China Mobile's phase II TD-SCDMA network will cover 28 cities across the nation. Under the agreement Alcatel-Lucent and Datang Mobile will provide the TD-SCDMA solution for 11 of the 28 cities, including Nanjing, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Changchun, Hefei, Guiyang, Kunming, Xi'an, Lanzhou, Yinchuan and Urumqi.
 
Upon the project's completion in June of 2009, the subscribers in these 11 cities will be able to enjoy a full range of multimedia services including ring back tones, multimedia messaging service and more.

Alcatel-Lucent to Focus on LTE

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 15, 2008 2:14 PM | 0 Comments
As reported on Friday, Alcatel-Lucent plans to undergo some strategic realignment of its core efforts, and among other things it means that there will be less attention on WiMAX in favor of a strategy that calls for a stronger focus on LTE or long-term evolution. Some analysts would think that's merely a prudent reaction to the market.
 
According to a recent Infonetics report:
 
...worldwide sales of fixed and mobile WiMAX equipment and phones/Ultra Mobile PCs dropped 21% to $245 million in 3Q08 from 2Q08, and are expected to continue sliding through 2009 as the economic recession puts the squeeze on this early market.
 
Even Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff said that his company -- clearly a leading poster child for WiMAX -- would also consider deploying LTE down the road "if it makes sense for us to do so."
 
Of course, that's not to say that Clearwire is backing away from WiMAX, but it does go to show that equipment manufacturers need to place their bets on one side or the other in this evolving battle, not both. Blogging on the 4G Wireless Evolution site, resident expert Paul Kapustka has more on that subject.

ALU Announces Strategic Vision for 2009 and Beyond

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 12, 2008 8:19 AM | 0 Comments
Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen spoke to media and analysts at a press conference today, announcing the company's strategic plan for 2009 and beyond. To read a full description of the company's plans, please read this article.
 
Verwaayen promised to work closely with Alcatel-Lucent's service provider, enterprise and application partners to "innovate, collaborate and partner... to stimulate a sustainable business model for the industry that will fuel innovation and the capital investment required to expand the overall web experience to more people and businesses."
 
The company will undergo a strategic reduction in workforce, eliminating approximately 1,000 management positions and lowering the number of contractor headcount by approximately 5,000.
 
Plans call for reducing the company's break-even point by 1 Billion Euros a year in 2009 and 2010.
 
Company officials also spoke of a renewed focus on research and development activities, targeting four key segments (Optical, IP, broadband and Applications enablement).

ALU Earns Spot in Leaders Quadrant

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 11, 2008 4:41 PM | 0 Comments
Alcatel-Lucent has been placed in the leaders quadrant of the recently published Gartner, report "Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide."
 
According to the report, "Gartner defines contact center infrastructure as the products (equipment, software and services) needed to operate call and contact centers. This type of infrastructure is used by customer and employee service and support centers, inbound and outbound telemarketing services, help-desk services, government-operated support centers, and other types of structured communications operation. The interactions can be human-assisted or automated self-service, using interactive voice response (IVR) and speech recognition technologies, for example. These channels for interaction use both live agents and messaging technology, and include voice, Web, e-mail, instant messaging, chat, video and mobile devices."
 
Alcatel-Lucent, when including its Genesys business unit, was ranked No. 2 in worldwide contact center infrastructure end user revenues market share based in 2007 with a combined share of 17.6 percent.
 
Alcatel-Lucent contact center solutions are a key asset of a dynamic enterprise, in which resources of the business -- its network, people, process and knowledge -- are closely linked to drive top and bottom line growth.

ALU Wins Femtocell Deal From Chunghwa Telecom

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 10, 2008 4:48 PM | 0 Comments
A recent ABI Research study posited that although femtocells hold tremendous promise for carriers, 2008 would pass as a fairly low-key year for femtocell vendors, with only "about 100,000 units" expected to ship in this year. 2009 will bear more fruit and 2010 will be the year when the market moves to double-digit millions in volume.
 
Well Alcatel-Lucent is doing their part to move the deployment numbers in the right direction, announcing a femtocell contract from Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest telecommunications provider, to deploy the first femtocell network in Taiwan, which is designed to enhance the coverage of Chunghwa Telecom's mobile network inside homes and offices.
 
Alcatel-Lucent will supply the operator with a comprehensive end-to-end solution including its Base Station Router (BSR) Femto -- which incorporates 3G W-CDMA radio access and core network elements into a single unit. The deployment will also include service routers and Home Device Manager from Motive, now part of Alcatel-Lucent's portfolio.
 

ALU Subsidiary Provides Custom App for U.S. Navy

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 9, 2008 4:56 PM | 0 Comments

When it comes to large-scale deployments of next-generation solutions, the military is quite the proving ground.

 

LGS, a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent that serves the U.S. government community, announced today that the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) has successfully deployed a custom-designed desktop application for 230,000 users.

 

With this deployment, LGS' LT Viewer is now used by more than 400,000 government users. The desktop application is designed to allow desktop users to view and manage digital engineering data.

 

LT Viewer lets personnel view and manage raster files (a type of graphic image file that includes formats such as JEDMICS C4, TIFF, and CALS). The Viewer allows viewing of other file formats such as PDF, Word or Excel by launching third-party applications, which allows for toggling back and forth between custom graphic programs and standard off-the-shelf software programs.

 

The LGS Custom Software & Video Solutions team worked closely with the Navy to manage the timed software deployment and assisted with LT Viewer distribution to users outside of the NMCI network. LGS will continue to work with the Navy to support and manage the software.

 

Base Stations' Affect on Backhaul

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 8, 2008 3:21 PM | 0 Comments
Writing in his latest The Middle Mile column today, titled Bigger Isn't Always Better, Dr. Alan Solheim addresses a number of issues critical to those looking to deploy base stations, touching upon various constraints such as reach, available spectrum, and teledensity and how they affect the operator's choice in selecting the appropriate solution for deployment at the base station.
 
As Solheim writes:
 
The discussion surrounding base station size (Macro, Micro, Pico or Femto) is certainly subject to ... confusing barrage of information and misinformation.
 
The need to continue to adapt one's product lines to track the changing requirements has never been more apparent. Those who cannot bring themselves to cannibalize their existing products with new offerings or who cling to traditional, TDM based technologies will be left behind in this rapidly evolving new world.
 
Make sure to check out the article here.

Telecom New Zealand Chooses Alcatel-Lucent for IP MPLS

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 5, 2008 11:34 AM | 0 Comments
When faced with the need to accommodate the need to backhaul traffic from its cellular W-CDMA and High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) traffic, Telecom new Zealand turned to Alcatel-Lucent and its IP Multi-Protocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS)-based mobile backhaul solution.

The solution features ALU's pseudowire technology, which is designed to adapts various traffic and media types from the W-CDMA base stations into IP/MPLS. Telecom New Zealand sees this as a benefit for future-proofing their solution, as they transition to a W-CDMA and HSPA deployment. By deploying ALU's solution, the backhaul network will have the flexibility and cost-effective scalability needed to support strong traffic growth and will allow the operator to scale and rapidly roll out innovative mobile broadband services.
 
According to the release:
 
Alcatel-Lucent's pseudowire solution includes the 7705 Service Aggregation Router (SAR) which is deployed in cellular base station sites to consolidate and aggregate traffic. The Alcatel-Lucent 7705 SAR allows service providers to scale traffic and simultaneously flatten their cost-curves for leased bandwidth, therefore improving their competitiveness. The 7705 SAR inherits its software architecture from the widely deployed IP/MPLS Service Router product line, retaining and building on its qualities but at a price and form factor appropriate to the cell site and hubs.
 

ALU Expands China Telecom Network

Posted by: Greg Galitzine | December 2, 2008 10:38 AM | 0 Comments
Years ago, people looked to areas like China and India as so-called greenfield opportunities. These were places unencumbered by legacy telephony systems, with growing demand and a chance to deploy next-generation communications technologies to address the needs of the region, rather than rely on aging copper wires, crumbling infrastructure etc....
 
Today we learned that China Telecom, China's leading telecom operator, has selected Alcatel-Lucent to provide an end-to-end solution for the carrier to increase its capacity and coverage of its mobile voice and data network throughout the country.
 
Valued at $230 million (US) the contract calls for CDMA wireless networking solutions to be deployed in 56 cities of 9 provinces in China. The deployment is currently underway and the expanded network will begin providing commercial services by the end of 2008.
 
The deployment will comprise a range of base stations designed to fit a variety of scenarios, from usage-heavy urban areas to rural areas where population is scarce.
 
According to the announcement, the base stations can be readily upgraded to support 3G services in the future.
« November 2008 | Main Index | Archives | January 2009 »

Blogroll

Recent Entry Images