NT gets 500mm TD-SCDMA contract:
Unicom, Chunghwa Hand $525 Mln in Contracts to Nortel
Hong Kong, Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Nortel Networks Corp., North America's No. 2 phone equipment maker, said it won two contracts together worth $525 million to build wireless networks in China and Taiwan serving 17 million subscribers.
China Unicom Ltd., the country's No. 2 mobile phone operator, awarded Nortel a $275 million contract to install equipment and software enabling wireless Internet services. Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd., which runs Taiwan's biggest cellular phone company, also awarded a $250 million contract to the Canadian company to expand a digital cellular network.
``The Asia Pacific market is one of the fastest growing markets,'' said Nortel's Asia Pacific President Masood Tariq, in an interview with Bloomberg Forum.
Nortel said it won a separate contract from Guangdong Unicom, a subsidiary of China Unicom, to build a high-speed optical network in Guangdong province. The company did not disclose the value of the Guangdong contract.
The number of mobile phone subscribers in China is currently about 70 million, and should reach 100 million a year from now, Tariq said.
Nortel has joined a consortium of Chinese companies and Siemens AG of Germany to develop a standard promoted by the Chinese government for so-called third-generation mobile phones with high speed access to the Internet. The standard is called TD- SCDMA.
The contracts come a day after Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc., the nation's second largest fixed-line phone operator, said it awarded a $200 million contract to Nortel to build its digital mobile phone network.
To keep up with the growth of the Asia market, Nortel will increase its workforce in the region by about 30 percent, bringing the total workforce to more than 5,400 by the end of next year, Tariq said.
Sep/28/2000 4:54 ET
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