HKBN and Alcatel-Lucent Partner for GPON FTTH

Alcatel-Lucent and Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited (HKBN), a wholly-owned subsidiary of City Telecom (HK) Limited announced the deployment of the first Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) in Hong Kong. The collaboration contract also includes network maintenance. Alcatel-Lucent’s Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) solution will enable HKBN to deliver advanced triple play services to its subscribers and enlarge its FTTH network coverage in Hong Kong. The new network is expected to be in service in January 2008.

The demand for advanced multimedia and data services in Hong Kong is expected to increase substantially in the coming years, driven by services such as high definition TV (HDTV) and enhanced multimedia applications. According to the FTTH Councils of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, Hong Kong is the world leader in percentage of homes wired with broadband communications over direct fiber optic connections, followed by South Korea and Japan. HKBN, the first provider in Hong Kong to launch fiber-to-the-home 100Mbps and 1Gbps services in 2005, plans to increase its coverage from 1.4 million to 2 million home passed within three years.

“After an intensive trial of Alcatel-Lucent’s GPON solution, we are pleased with the maturity and performance of the technology,” said Paul Cheung, Chief Executive Officer of HKBN. “By leveraging Alcatel-Lucent’s market-leading expertise in FTTH, we will continue to deploy new and advanced service offerings, providing seamless and premium connectivity services catering to our customers’ requirements.”

“We are proud to partner with Hong Kong Broadband delivering the first GPON network in Hong Kong,” said Frédéric Rose, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s business in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. “We are committed to provide them with our best of breed solutions and global expertise and to help them maintain its technology leadership in advanced broadband deployment.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will deploy the 7342 Intelligent Services Access Manager Fiber-to-the-Home (ISAM FTTU) solution. The system is designed specifically for packet-based voice convergence and triple play services and delivers maximum bandwidth and QoS over a fiber access network. The system enables seamless multimedia services such as high-speed data, IPTV, VoIP, content on demand or interactive multi-media services. The solution can deliver any mix of voice, video or data over a single fiber that terminates at the subscriber’s premise supporting 2.5 Gb/s downstream - the highest bandwidth offered to the mass market today.



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