Alcatel Inks Deutsche Telekom Pact

Intelligent optical-networking provider Alcatel announced a three-year pact with German telecommunications operator Deutsche Telekom AG, where Alcatel will supply Deutsche Telekom with 1.2 million kilometers of cabled optical fiber through 2003, with the first deliveries starting in the middle of this year.

Alcatel did not specify the value of the pact in a press release, but an industry source is quoted in Reuters as saying the deal was likely to be “generally worth several tens of millions of euros.”

Deutsche Telekom has been a major customer of Alcatel’s solutions for a number of years, officials said.

Deutsche Telekom will be deploying Alcatel’s single-mode optical fiber cables, as part of the company’s ongoing plans to upgrade and expand its optical networking capabilities. This deal further extends Alcatel optical solutions throughout Deutsche Telekom’s operations. The project will use optical cables with 8 to 196 individual standard single-mode fibers (SSMF), currently the most commonly used type of optical fiber.

Alcatel has a complete portfolio of optical fiber solutions including SSMF, multi-mode fiber and its advanced Non Zero-Dispersion Shifted Fibers (NZ-DSF), TeraLight Metro and TeraLight Ultra. These two products are based on Alcatel’s proven TeraLight technology, which has set many transmission capacity records, including the latest for 10.2 Tbps transmission at 40 Gbps on a single fiber.