Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile accelerate development of lightRadio™ to support exploding customer demand for mobile broadband in China

Teams sign lightRadio™ architecture co-creation agreement to accelerate the development and delivery of lightning fast mobile broadband services in a sustainable way

Barcelona, February 28, 2012 – Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and China Mobile have signed a co-creation agreement under which teams from the two companies are conducting joint development and test activities on a series of lightRadio projects at Alcatel-Lucent’s Stuttgart lab.  The work will help to accelerate the smooth commercial introduction of this groundbreaking new product family to meet China Mobile’s business initiatives and support growing customer demand for high-bandwidth mobile broadband services. 

China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile provider. Benefiting from the dramatic growth in mobile Internet use, China Mobile had around 650 million subscribers by the end of 2011. – and that number is growing at a rate of 11.2% year over year. Those customers are increasingly adopting smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices which is driving massive  demand for high-bandwidth mobile data services such as video and Internet gaming. 

This co-creation agreement follows the non-binding MoU signed between Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile in mid 2011. It also builds on the collaboration between the companies on the delivery of superfast mobile broadband using TD-LTE technology and the announcement of the first Trans-Pacific lightRadio video call. This agreement defines the projects that will be undertaken by the two companies and kicks off the co-development activities. This collaboration will speed the introduction of the lightRadio product prototype to the second half of the year.

Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio™ reduces the size of traditional mobile base stations to a Rubik’s cube, while lowering power-consumption and allowing the transfer of vast amounts of data at lightning fast speeds.

Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, said: “The ability for us to pair with the world’s largest mobile provider to gain deeper insight into its customer behaviours and the way services are evolving will ensure we develop lightRadio in the right direction. The knowledge we gain from implementing lightRadio to support the delivery of mobile broadband services to 650 million people will help us to meet the growing demand for services across the globe.

The co-creation agreement was signed by Bill Huang, president of China Mobile Research Institute and Wim Sweldens, president of Alcatel-Lucent Wireless Division, on January 13 at Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs headquarters in Murray Hill, New Jersey.  Li Zhengmao, Vice President of China Mobile, and Jeong Kim, President of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs attended the signing ceremony.

Under the terms of the agreement, China Mobile engineers have already begun working with Alcatel-Lucent’s R&D team in the company’s lab in Stuttgart Germany.  The two companies will co-work on a series of lightRadio joint development projects including the cube-based radio, baseband unit (BBU) pooling and redefining the radio architecture. By bringing together talents from both companies, these projects will support China Mobile’s evolving business initiatives, including the introduction of high-speed TD-LTE mobile broadband technology, encourage idea-generation and facilitate the smooth commercial implementation of lightRadio.

ABOUT ALCATEL-LUCENT (EURONEXT PARIS AND NYSE: ALU)

The long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leading innovator in the field of networking and communications technology, products and services. The company is home to Bell Labs, one of the world’s foremost R&D organizations, responsible for breakthroughs that have shaped the networking and communications industry. Alcatel-Lucent is committed to making communications more sustainable, more affordable and more accessible as we pursue our mission – Realizing the Potential of a Connected World.

With operations in more than 130 countries and one of the most experienced global services organizations in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The Company achieved revenues of Euro 15.3 billion in 2011 and is incorporated in France and headquartered in Paris.

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