Lucent Digital Video Announces Sale of World's Largest Optical Digital
Television System for China's Hubei Province
BEIJING, CHINA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 29, 1998--Lucent Digital Video, a
wholly-owned venture of Lucent Technologies, today announced that it has
sold digital television (DTV) equipment to the Hubei Cable TV Network
Company, Ltd. for what will be the world's largest digital video network
using fiber-optic technology.
Under the US$4 million contract, Lucent will provide its award-winning
digital video encoder (18 units) and decoder (160 units), which are part of
its Lucent WaveStar(TM) Digital Video System(TM) (DVS) offering.
The encoders and decoders enable high-quality video to be passed through the
network in an efficient, flexible manner. They are based on the worldwide
MPEG-2 (Motion Picture Expert Group) standard and connect 36 cities in the
Hubei province.
The deal complements earlier digital network wins that Lucent Digital Video
has made in China, including the installation of the world's first optical
MPEG-2/ Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH)
network in Zhejiang, as well as a digital network in Hainan.
"China's digital television networks are 21st-century design today," said
Rau Chang, Lucent's vice president of transmission sales for China. "The
systems for Hubei are the latest - and most powerful - example of what
Lucent's digital video and optical networking expertise can accomplish
together."
When combined, Lucent's SDH, ATM and MPEG-2 system allows for a single
network to carry video, voice, and data and it provides remote locations
with video through the centralized network.
Lucent's fiber-optic digital video installation in Hubei will allow
broadcasters to add and drop programming for each city in a flexible manner.
The central control for the Hubei network will reside in Wuhan, the
provincial city.
The Hubei network is part of the China digital television infrastructure
build-out. Each of China's 31 provinces is expected to use MPEG-2/ATM/SDH
over ATM as the standard platform for transmitting digital television.
The largest example of MPEG-2 over fiber in a single network, the Hubei
network includes 39 Lucent MPEG-2 Digital Video System units and more than
44 WaveStar ADM 16/1 multiplexing units. The network will combine the Lucent
WaveStar DVS with Lucent's Wavestar Add/Drop Multiplexer (ADM) 16/1 and the
Lucent ITM-SC (Integrated Transport Management - Subnetwork Controller). The
WaveStar ADM will provide Hubei with an integrated SDH and MPEG-2/ATM
solution, which gives superior bandwidth efficiency and flexibility.
"Digital video networks require highly flexible and intelligent design
components," said Andreas Papanicolaou, president of Lucent Digital Video.
"Lucent is prepared to take digital video to new heights through optical
networks, which are the future of this industry."
Lucent's SDH architecture is used throughout China today in the national,
provincial, city junction, and rural networks. The Hubei system will use ATM
over STM-16 links running at 2.5 gigabits per second.
For more information on the Lucent MPEG-2 Digital Video System, visit the
Lucent Digital Video Web site at www.lucent.com/ldv. For more information on
Lucent's SDH products, visit www.lucent.com/netsys/opticalnet/
Lucent won an Engineering Emmy Award in 1997 for its pioneering work in DTV
as a member of the HDTV Grand Alliance. The company, which contributed to
the original MPEG-2 specification, also built the world's first MPEG-2 and
HDTV encoders.
Lucent Digital Video is one of several new entrepreneurial business groups
formed by Lucent to bring to market the best of Bell Labs technologies.
Leveraging decades of Bell Labs, research and development, the group was
formed to manufacture and market digital video products, including encoders.
Lucent Digital Video markets its product line for cable, wireless cable,
fiber optic and satellite back-hauling, DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite) and
other applications worldwide. In January, 1998, Lucent Digital Video
announced a strategic alliance with Harris Corp. to market DTV equipment for
the North American broadcast market.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs, builds and
delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems
and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and
microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm
for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit the
company's web site at www.lucent.com.
|
