Motorola, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks announced agreements with China United Telecommunications Corp., or China Unicom, to improve its cellular phone network.
Motorola's global telecom unit said it had signed contracts totaling $446 million for the deployment of a CDMA 1X system, a higher-speed cellular communications network. China Unicom is also giving Sweden-based Ericsson deals worth more than $150 million for improvements to its some of its existing telecommunications network. The contracts call for Ericsson to upgrade existing cdmaOne networks to CDMA 1X.
Nortel said its joint venture in China, Guangdong Nortel Telecommunications, had signed a series of contracts worth $280 million to supply China Unicom with digital wireless network infrastructure equipment.
Nortel's Univity CDMA 1X equipment will be used to expand China Unicom's network capacity in the provinces of Zhejiang, Shandong, Heilongjiang, Henan, and Jiangxi, and in Chongqing municipality. These expansions are expected to be complete within one year.
Lucent said China Unicom had awarded it the second phase of a wireless telecommunications contract worth "hundreds of millions of dollars." Under the agreement, Lucent will provide CDMA 1X equipment technology for high-speed wireless data services such as e-mail and Internet access.
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