Nortel gaining speed in Asia

Nortel Networks is gaining momentum in the Asia/Pacific region in spite of lackluster sales in North America and Europe. Today the vendor announced a deal to build four resilient packet rings via its OPTera Metro SDH platform. China Mobile will be using the OPTera Metro 5200 and 3500 for the build.

A division of the provider, Zhejiang Mobile will also use Nortel’s Passport 8600 routing switches. On Tuesday, Nortel also announced a $20 million deal with Chunghwa Telecom, which is deploying Nortel’s OPTera Long Haul 1600 DWDM systems and its OPTera DX optical switches.

“A number of our wins have been the backbone networks, whether its metro or long haul or both together for wireless carriers,” said Dan Mondor, senior vice president of marketing for Nortel’s optical networking group.

The China Mobile deal is “an optical infrastructure build supporting the data networking and communication requirements for wireless [traffic],” Mondor said.

The two branches of China Mobile involved with the new contract, Zhejiang and Shanghai Mobile, will use the Nortel equipment to sell storage, continuity and disaster recovery services to its wireless customers.

“China is the one that has been our biggest success story so far [in the region],” Mondor said.