BT Fuels Super-fast Broadband Deployment by Strengthening its Strategic Partnership with Huawei

Huawei, a leader in providing next-generation telecommunications network solutions for operators around the world, today announced it has further strengthened its strategic partnership with BT by providing a number of access products to support BT' s Openreach division in the deployment of the company' s new national fibre network.

BT is planning to spend an extra £1 billion on its next-generation broadband network to bring super-fast broadband to two-thirds of UK households by 2015, subject to an acceptable environment for investment. As one of BT' s strategic partners, Huawei is dedicated to providing BT with professional solutions to fulfill the requirements of BT' s Next Generation Access network. Huawei' s unique SingleFAN (fibre access network) solution is based on an open and unified platform, enabling Openreach to significantly reduce operation and maintenance costs. Huawei' s SingleFAN solution also offers a future-proof platform for communications providers using the Openreach network to roll out multi-play services to residential and business customers.

Steve Robertson, Openreach' s CEO said: ''BT and Huawei have had a strong relationship for several years; we are pleased to extend this further by choosing Huawei as one of our strategic partners to help us deploy Next Generation Access on a national scale as part of BT' s £2.5bn investment in fibre technology. Huawei' s cutting-edge optical access and transmission technology will provide our CP customers with the ability to offer more diversified high-bandwidth services and an improved broadband experience to their customers."

''We are proud to contribute to the construction of BT' s pan-UK fibre deployment," said Chengdong Yu, president of Huawei Europe. ''Huawei has extensive experience in designing and delivering optical access solutions around the world and we will apply this experience together with our strong innovation abilities, to collaborate with BT in achieving its strategic goals and bringing super-fast broadband to the UK."

BT and Huawei started FTTx deployment in 2008 resulting in the launch of FTTC super-fast broadband services this year.


About BT

BT is one of the world' s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2010, BT Group' s revenue was £20,911 million.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

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