Belgacom enhances its optical network with Alcatel equipment

22 January 2004 Paris Lightwave Europe -- Alcatel has announced the signing of a multi-million Euro, four-year frame agreement with Belgacom SA, the Belgium incumbent operator, to upgrade and expand its existing core and metro optical transport networks, beginning in 2004. The project will enhance the efficiency and capacity of Belgacom's transport network to more cost-effectively carry advanced broadband services and new optical services.

Leveraging Alcatel's optical transport solutions, Belgacom will be positioned to further migrate its transport network to support advanced revenue-generating services and increase network flexibility to meet the growing bandwidth requirements driven by broadband applications. Belgacom currently offers its enterprise and residential customers a suite of services, including voice, high-speed Internet access, leased lines, networked storage, and multimedia streaming.

Over the four-year contract period, Alcatel will supply its multi-service gateways and multi-service provisioning platform that enables Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet services by integrating carrier-class Layer 2 functionality to aggregate and transport data traffic with enhanced quality of service. The terms of the frame agreement also cover Alcatel's WDM equipment, which supports a range of data rates and flexibly ensures smooth network upgrades. To supervise the network, Alcatel will supply its multi-service network element management platform, which simplifies network operations by providing seamless control and routing throughout the optical network, as well as related maintenance.

Belgacom was looking for a supplier that combined excellence in innovation with a clear vision on the network migration. Belgacom choose Alcatel for its outstanding expertise and future proof solutions that will help it to further develop its business, benefiting from higher network performance, scalability and reliability.

"Belgacom's investment demonstrates the importance of relying on modern transport networks to deliver the most advanced services through incremental upgrades," explains Romano Valussi, president of Alcatel's optical network activities. "The completeness of Alcatel's managed optical networking portfolio will enable Belgacom to choose the most appropriate solution according to its network scenarios and offer additional broadband services in the Belgian market."