Alcatel has been selected by Shandong Netcom, a subsidiary of China Netcom, to deploy an e- government backbone network for the Shandong provincial government in China.

The contract was won through Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel's flagship Chinese company.

Under the contract, Alcatel will provide Shandong Netcom with the carrier- class Alcatel 7750 Service Router to build an e-government backbone network covering 17 cities in Shandong Province. Upon completion of the network in March 2004, Shandong Netcom will be able to offer the provincial government more secure, reliable and higher quality voice, data and multimedia services across different functional units and at all levels. Shandong Netcom also will deploy the Alcatel 5620 Service Router Manager which will provide tightly integrated assurance, provisioning and a single point of operations support system integration ensuring the smooth introduction and operation of next generation services for its customers.

The new backbone network will enable the Shandong provincial government to achieve greater management efficiency by integrating the existing networks of different government bureaus in different locations into consolidated virtual private networks. Supported by Alcatel's leading Virtual Private LAN Service solution, the integration ensures secure and efficient communications among different governmental functions such as finance, healthcare and law enforcement as well as enhancing their links to external networks.

The Alcatel 7750 Service Router is the first scalable IP/Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) service router designed and optimized for the delivery of advanced private data services and Internet access. With a range of revenue-generating service level agreement (SLA)-based services supported by the 7750 Service Router, providers can leverage their IP and IP/MPLS networks to improve their competitive position in today's challenging market. The advanced, fast path technology enables flexible, sophisticated SLA support, plus outstanding performance and scaling. The 7750 Service Router also delivers extensive quality assurance and management capabilities and tight integration with the Alcatel 5620 Service Router Manager, simplifying service provisioning, operations and troubleshooting.