Alcatel (Paris) has been awarded a multimillion-U.S.-dollar project to provide fully integrated telecommunications solutions for an 800-km-long oil pipeline for the Pak-Arab Pipeline Co. (PAPCO) in Pakistan. Alcatel will design, integrate, install, and commission all telecom applications, including an optical transmission backbone, covering all 18 sites along the pipeline.
The project was awarded by China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corp. (CPECC), one of the largest international contractors in China. CPECC is building the pipeline for
PAPCO, spanning from Mohmood Kot in the north to Karachi in the south of Pakistan. The oil and gas telecom solution comprises next-generation optical multiservice nodes, a private automatic branch exchange, VHF and UHF trunking, a hotline telephone system, radio paging, optical Ethernet switching, a power system, secured connectivity to SCADA components, public announcement, and centralised network management. Upon completion of the project next year, PAPCO will be able to provide unmanned automatic communications services along the entire pipeline, including voice, data, and video services.