Australia’s NBN has selected Alcatel Lucent to supply key equipment for the country’s national broadband network.
In a deal worth an initial US$70m, Alcatel Lucent will supply the Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) and Ethernet Aggregation equipment…
Australia’s NBN has selected Alcatel Lucent to supply key equipment for the country’s national broadband network.
In a deal worth an initial US$70m, Alcatel Lucent will supply the Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) and Ethernet Aggregation equipment to operate the fibre access network, NBN said in a statement.
“Entering into this key contract enables NBN Co to deliver a world-class, fibre-based, high-speed network for Australia, starting with our announced first release sites,” said Kevin Brown, NBN’s Head of Corporate Services.
“We plan to spend up to $1.5 billion on this highly-specialised network equipment during the lifetime of this project,” he added.
NBN said that it had committed to an initial US$70m fixed price purchase with the option to buy as much equipment as it needs as the project progresses.
Alcatel Lucent has also been handed a US$15m contract to provide services to assist NBN with engineering and testing over the next year.
Earlier this week, NBN said that 21 companies were tendering for the contract to build the high-speed broadband network with Telstra among them. The telco has agreed a preliminary US$11bn deal to release its copper network to be replaced by fibre-optic cables.
The Australian government is preparing to invest A$43bn on the project.