China Unicom expands partnership with Nokia

NEW DELHI: Finland based telecom giant Nokia is expanding its exclusive partnership with China Unicom for the high-end core router CR-B for three continuous years with its large-capacity core router platform - the 7950 Extensible Routing System (XRS). China Unicom selected the 7950 XRS family to build a more intelligent, flexible and scalable core network with the ability to meet future capacity demands and support the country's national broadband plan.

China Unicom initially deployed the 7950 XRS into metro networks in six provinces - Beijing, Shandong, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Inner Mongolia and Qinghai - and this year plans to scale out to an additional four including Heilongjiang, Henan, Zhejiang and Hunan to improve speed and response times for the fixed and mobile broadband subscribers.

In 2013 China launched its Broadband China initiative to invest $182 billion to boost the speed and quality of Internet services across the country. The aim is to reduce the digital divide by providing businesses and urban and rural citizens with national broadband coverage by 2020. In keeping with this initiative, China Unicom has been continually improving the scale and capacity of its networks.

Nokia's industry-leading 7950 XRS platform delivers the scale, efficiency and versatility required so China Unicom can address the full range of core networking requirements with room to also meet capacity demands well into the future. In addition, the XRS is based on a highly programmable Network Processor (NP) architecture that provides the capacity and capabilities needed as cloud service requirements evolve.

"We are honored to continue our work with China Unicom in the CR-B core router segment," said Mike Wang, head of the joint management team of Nokia Networks China and ASB .

"Leveraging the Nokia 7950 XRS platform, China Unicom gains the bandwidth, flexibility and programmability necessary to manage its growing networks and to better meet the needs of the country's ambitious broadband strategy," added Wang.