China Telecom has selected Alcatel for its first commercial Next Generation Network (NGN) contract.

The contract was awarded by China Telecom's subsidiary Shanghai Telecom to Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel's flagship Chinese company. This follows China Telecom's successful NGN trial with Alcatel Shanghai Bell in 2002.

Next Generation Networks allow service providers to evolve from their traditional voice services to a full range of multimedia services. When completed by end of this year, Shanghai Telecom will be able to provide fully integrated voice, data and multimedia services via Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and Ethernet to its broadband residential and enterprise customers.

These services include broadband Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, video telephony and video conferencing, personal communication assistant (PCA), IP Centrex, voice virtual private network (VPN) and unified messaging. The PCA is a Web-based personal communications service while the IP Centrex allows enterprises to outsource their complete voice services needs.