Alcatel today announced that it recently helped China Telecom deploy a full-fledged 3G trial network in Shanghai within three months.

The network is now ready for 3G field testing sponsored by China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII), the country's telecom regulatory body. The project was accomplished through Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel's Chinese flagship company. Alcatel has overall responsibility for network planning and design, site survey and equipment engineering and installation. With Alcatel's Evolium 3G solutions including the core and radio access products, China Telecom is successfully providing Adaptive Multi Rate voice services, video telephony and Packet Switched multimedia services.

To support the development of 3G in China, Alcatel launched China 's first open and end -to-end 3G Reality Centre (3GRC) in Shanghai, where Alcatel partners with Internet Service Providers and Content Providers to develop and test innovative user-centric 3G applications. Alcatel successfully conducted China's first public 3G multimedia call on a commercial UMTS product in January 2003.