IP Communications

China Telecom, the state-owned telecommunications operator in China, has handed over CDMA equipment contracts worth Chinese Yen (CNY) 27.9 billion to Huawei (News - Alert) Technologies Co., ZTE Corporation and Alcatel- Lucent.

 

On Aug. 20, China Telecom declared the results of bidding invitation it had organized for the CDMA equipments, after the operator decided to take over the CDMA network from China Unicom (News - Alert) in telecommunications industry regrouping of China.

 

In the statement, it said out of all of the orders, about 40 percent were grabbed by Huawei and ZTE, the two known telecommunications equipment manufacturing companies of China. Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), the third company, managed to get about 20 percent, and some of the contracts were also handed over to Fujian Fujitsu Communication Software (FFCS), the statement said.

 

In the coming three years, China Telecom has planned to invest a minimum of (CNY) 80 billion into the CDMA network it has recently acquired. The telecom industry’s revamped plan of China had been declared in May, and the first phase of bidding for the CDMA equipment began in July.

 

ZTE (News - Alert) got about half of all the access network contracts, while Alcatel-Lucent stood at second position with nearly 20 percent contracts. Aside from these two companies, Huawei, AsiaInfo Holdings and FFCS got the remaining contracts, whereas the contract to act as the nationwide WAP portal of China Telecom went to Tencent Holdings (News - Alert) Limited, which is an IT company from China.

 

ZTE also managed to grab contracts for operating short message centers (SMSC) in 12 provinces of China and Internet short message gateways (ISMG) in 10 provinces. The contract for running China Telecom's three nationwide platforms, including ISAG Router, ENUMDNS and mobile positioning system, also went to the same company.

 

Huawei got contracts for SMSCs in 11 provinces and SMSGs in 15 provinces, aside from running the business releasing center of China Telecom.Previously, the executives of China Telecom had stated that the company was not going to accept a very low offer of (CNY) 600 million made by Huawei, so that a fair competition could be ensured.