Alcatel announced that it has been awarded three separate GSM and GPRS expansion contracts by Chinese mobile service providers, Shaanxi MCC and Jiangsu MCC, two subsidiaries of China Mobile. The contracts, estimated at about 53 million Euro, were won through Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel's flagship company in China.

As part of the contract with Shaanxi MCC, Alcatel will provide and install its Evolium GSM/EDGE platform to expand mobile service in five major cities across Shaanxi Province: Yulin, Yan'an, Shangluo, Baoji and Xianyang. To ensure quality of service, Alcatel has reinforced its rural coverage solution with indoor and outdoor base stations. Alcatel will also provide Shaanxi MCC with its TCA-compliant Serving GPRS Support Node, that will enable nearly one million additional subscribers to take advantage of enhanced mobile voice and data services, such as web browsing, video streaming, and instant messaging.

Alcatel's contract with Jiangsu MCC provides for installation of Alcatel's Evolium GSM/EDGE solutions including Base Stations, Base Station Controllers, Transcoder, Multi-BSS Fast Packet Server and Operation & Maintenance Center for Radio. The network will serve subscribers in Jiangsu Province located in the cities of Nanjing, Yangzhou, Xuzhou, Huaian, Yancheng, Lianyungang, Suqian and Taizhou. This is the 9th GSM network expansion contract that Alcatel has secured with Jiangsu MCC.

Alcatel has been providing mobile communication solutions in China since 1993, when it introduced the country's first GSM system in Zhejiang Province. To date, Alcatel's Evolium solutions have already been installed in 25 Chinese provinces.