This first contract was signed today in Mérida in presence of Ismael Oliver, SPTE’s President, Juan García-Conde, SPTE’s CEO and TeleCable’s President, and Federico Guillén, in charge of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities for Iberia,

The contract involves designing, deploying and integrating an end-to-end fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network. In a first phase it will enable connecting 134,000 households in the four most populated municipalities of Extremadura (Badajoz, Cáceres, Mérida and Plasencia) and will provide ultra high-speed Internet services with bandwidths up to 100 Mbps, multimedia and digital TV, as well as voice and other communications services. The investment foreseen for this initial phase of the project will reach 86 million Euro.

The deployment will be closely coordinated with regional and local governments based on efficiency and sustainability criteria, leveraging urban and long-distance infrastructure as well as ducts already available.

The end-to-end network that Alcatel-Lucent will deploy, builds on the company’s expertise in gigabit passive optical networking (GPON), IP/MPLS aggregation,as well as packet optical and WDM transport. In addition, this contract involves the design and integration that will provide Extremadura’s inhabitants with the most advanced multimedia services over Alcatel-Lucent’s MiViewTV interactive television platform.

Ismael Oliver, President SPTE, commented: “Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end solution will enable us to deploy one of Europe’s most advanced broadband networks and the biggest amongst regional fiber networks in Spain, which will soon become the engine driving the social and economic development of the entire region.”

“The collaboration with TeleCable and SPTE shows that Alcatel-Lucent is committed to help cable operators transform their access networks into an operationally more cost-effective architecture, leveraging GPON technology. Also, beyond the technological aspects, this project highlights the importance of integration and services skills to quickly and successfully design, implement and deliver innovative TV and multimedia solutions,” added Federico Guillén, in charge of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities for Iberia.

About SPTE

Sociedad Promotora de Telecomunicaciones de Extremadura (SPTE) is a joint initiative of the local government of Extremadura and TeleCable building on the knowledge and experience developed in the region of Asturias in the last years. The project, with the participation of Caja de Extremadura y Caja Badajoz, has the mission to install a fiber to the user regional platform in Extremadura enabling high penetration of Internet, television and telephony services at homes and in the enterprises, as well as other advanced telecom services, aiming at generating a multiplying factor in Extremadura’s economy due to the introduction of higher competition.