ZTE Corporation has won a large Passive Optical Network (PON) equipment contract from China Telecom valued at over RMB1 billion (USD146 million).

The equipment will support China Telecom s City Optical Network project which was launched in 2009 with the aim of providing customers with higher speed broadband access to enhance their user experience. Under the contract ZTE will provide its ZXA10 xPON passive access system to China Telecom. The new network solution is based on triple-play service which provides multicast and DBA capabilities and supports high broadband subscriber access services such as HSI, VoIP, IPTV, and CATV.

Under China Telecom s long-term plan, approximately 20 million fibre-optic broadband lines will be deployed, allowing it to provide downlink speeds of up to 12Mbps to more than 70% of rural areas and up to 100Mbps speeds in major cities across the country. The contract for the xPON equipment was tendered earlier this year and ZTE successfully won the bidding process over other competitors.Ltd.