WCA November 2009

As reported by MyBroadband, the contract calls for Alcatel-Lucent to lay an additional 1,606 miles of fibre and deploy its optical transmission solutions to connect any remaining geographic areas. Scheduled for completion in 2011, the Mozambican national fibre optic backbone will connect individuals and companies in Mozambique to the global submarine network and bring high-speed connectivity to provincial capitals countrywide. In other news of Alcatel-Lucent, ✆ ✆ the Paris-based company has signed with JV Asia TransGas LLC, an Uzbek oil and gas pipeline operator, to provide a communi- cations network for the 310-mile Uzbekistan-China gas pipeline. The vendor said that it would install a turnkey integrated communications solution, including radio and optical transmission, satellite-based TV system and telephone devices, voice switching systems, and local area networks. The contract, announced 19 th August, was signed through Alcatel-Lucent’s Chinese flagship company, Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell. 2009 it will have begun a project to double the speed of its network in six American cities: Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami. The new, speedier network standard HSPA 7.2 is also scheduled to be in 25 of the top 30 US markets by the end of 2010, the company said. That would, according to AT&T, reach about 90% of its existing 3G network. The peak speed of the current network is 3.6 Mbps. As noted by Roy Furchgott of the blog Gadgetwise (9 th September), while the HSPA 7.2 network can reach peak speeds of 7.2 megabits per second (Mbps), “real-world speed will be affected by where you are, which phone you own, and the amount of traffic on the network.” Two cities conspicuously absent from the list for conversion are San Francisco and New York, where a high concentration of iPhone users has taxed AT&T service and provoked complaints. AT&T (Dallas, Texas) said on 9 ✆ ✆ th September that by the end of