Lucent Lands China Services Deals

Telecom equipment maker Lucent today announced new contracts that accomplish two of its strategic goals: boost business in China; and increase services revenues.

The Murray Hill, N.J., company will provide technical support, management consulting, staff training and network optimization for a subsidiaries of Unicom Horizon Mobile Telecom and China Netcom. Neither the duration nor the value of the pacts was disclosed.

“It’s a big strategy for our worldwide services group to tap into the China market,” said Stephen Loudermilk, a Lucent spokesman. “It’s part of our whole approach to multi-vendor networking.”

Loudermilk said the company has the networking expertise to help service providers integrate components from different vendors.

For the Unicom unit, Lucent will provide service that will help the carrier build and maintain a code-division multiple access network. CDMA is a digital cellular technology that uses spread-spectrum technologies. For the China Netcom subsidiary, Lucent will provide a range of technical services to support its optical network.

The wins come a week after Lucent pledged $50 million to upgrade its reseach and development (R&D) facilities in China.

The investment is intended to spur development of third-generation (define) technologies, including CDMA and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks (sometimes called Wideband-CDMA).

Lucent China has eight regional offices, two Bell Labs branches, four R&D facilities and a number of joint ventures and wholly owned enterprises. Currently, the company has approximately 3,000 employees in China and manufactures a range of network equipment for use there as well as around the world.