Alcatel (Paris) secured a contract from China`s Ministry of Railways to supply a Synchronous Digital Hierarchy- (SDH-) based optical backbone system to the Wuhan-Hengyang-Guangzhou section of the Beijing-Guangzhou railway. Financial terms of the deal were not announced. The backbone will cover a distance of more than 1000 km with a transmission capacity of STM-4 (622 Mbits/sec). Installation of the network is scheduled to be completed this year. Alcatel also announced the acquisitions of Xylan Corp. (Calabasas, CA) and Assured Access Technology Inc. (AAT--Milpitas, CA). The two acquisitions will strengthen Alcatel`s Internet protocol (IP) access market position. With the Xylan acquisition, valued at $2 billion, Alcatel gains an internal source of recently announced edge and aggregation routers of network points of presence. AAT, an acquisition valued at approximately $350 million, will add a multiservice access platform that includes voice-over-IP applications. Alcatel also announced plans to reorganize the company to focus more on the IP access market opportunity.