A1 Telekom Austria taps Alcatel-Lucent for broadband network upgrade, including G.fast

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) says it has signed a wide-ranging deal with Telekom Austria's subsidiary A1 to remake its broadband access network. The systems house will supply a variety of platforms and technology, including G.fast, Alcatel-Lucent's Vplus copper-based transmission option, and IP routing and optical transport systems.

The network upgrades will help A1 Telekom Austria meet national broadband initiative goals that call for 99% of Austria's homes to have access to Internet downstream rates of at least 100 Mbps. The country is halfway to this goal, according to Alcatel-Lucent.

A1 Telekom Austria will use G.fast for in-site connectivity in fiber to the building (FTTB) deployments and Vplus for fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) architectures, says Alcatel-Lucent. The two had previously conducted field trials of G.fast for FTTB (see "Alcatel-Lucent demos 1-Gbps G.fast with Telekom Austria" and "First G.fast customer connected by Telekom Austria's A1 as part of trial").

Alcatel-Lucent asserts that the DSL-based VPlus technology will support aggregate data transmission rates of 200 Mbps or more over copper at distances of up to 500 m and 300 Mbps over distances shorter than 250 m.

The systems house will supply its 7367 ISAM SX-16 sealed micro-node that supports G.fast, the 7302 and 7330 ISAM that support Vplus, and the 7368 ISAM MX-6 micro-node, which also will support Vplus.

Further back in the network, A1 also will deploy Alcatel-Lucent's 7750 SR-a edge router and 1830 Photonic Service Switch. The two platforms will support an integrated IP and optical transport infrastructure, Alcatel-Lucent says.

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