Alcatel-Lucent and Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited (HKBN), a wholly-owned subsidiary of City Telecom (HK) Limited, have announced the deployment of the first Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) in Hong Kong. Alcatel-Lucent’s Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) solution will enable HKBN to deliver advanced triple-play services to its subscribers and enlarge its FTTH network coverage in Hong Kong. The new network is expected to be in service in January 2008.
     The demand for advanced multimedia and data services in Hong Kong is expected to increase substantially in the coming years, driven by such services as high definition TV (HDTV) and enhanced multimedia applications. According to the FTTH Councils of the Asia Pacific, Europe and North America, Hong Kong leads the world in the percentage of homes wired with broadband communications over direct fiber-optic connections, followed by South Korea and Japan. HKBN, the first provider in Hong Kong to launch 100Mbps and 1Gbps FTTH services, plans to increase its coverage from 1.4 million to 2 million homes passed within three years.
     “After an intensive trial of Alcatel-Lucent’s GPON solution, we are pleased with the maturity and performance of the technology,” commented Paul Cheung, CEO of HKBN. “By leveraging Alcatel-Lucent’s market-leading expertise in FTTH, we will continue to deploy new and advanced service offerings.”
     “We are proud to partner with HKBN in delivering the first GPON network in Hong Kong,” said Sean Dolan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities in North East Asia. “We are committed to the local market, providing our best of breed solutions and global expertise, helping Hong Kong to maintain its technology leadership in advanced broadband deployment,” added Dolan.
     Under the terms of the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will deploy the 7342 Intelligent Services Access Manager Fiber-to-the-Home (ISAM FTTH) solution. The system is designed specifically for packet-based voice convergence and triple-play services, and it delivers maximum bandwidth and QoS over a fiber access network.
     City Telecom’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited (HKBN), has achieved an aggregate Voice, Broadband (symmetric 25Mbps up to 1Gbps), IPTV and corporate data services base in excess of 640,000 subscriptions. Additional information about CityTelecom can be found at www. ctigroup.com.hk.
     Alcatel-Lucent has operations in more than 130 countries. The company achieved adjusted revenues of EUR18.3 billion in 2006 and is incorporated in France. Alcatel-Lucent has a website at http://www.alcatel-lucent.com.

Diguang CEO outlines achievements and strategy

     Song Yi, president and CEO of Diguang International Development, an emerging leader in the manufacture of CCFL and LED backlights for the LCD display industry, has issued a letter, concerning company strategy, to shareholders. The letter is publicly available on the company’s website at www.diguangintl.com.
     Highlighting the company’s return to profitability in the third quarter of 2007, following three quarters marked by industry-wide pricing pressure and oversupply issues, Song’s letter reviews strategies and policies that have supported the turnaround.
     The key strategies are global positioning, both in marketing and production; continued expansion of the company’s backlight product lines from smaller formats to medium- and large-size formats; and keeping pace with an industry-wide shift from CCFL backlight technology to LEDs. “LED technology has advantages in energy savings, a smaller product profile, longer product lifetimes and a more favorable environmental scorecard that involves no mercury,” notes the letter.
     Song further states, “Larger-size products are usually associated with higher inventory costs. In order to avoid the risks of obsolescence and to keep our working capital from being tied up in inventory, we have adopted a consignment strategy, asking our customers to purchase parts for their own products.”
     Song hails the growing market demand for a new, mid-size backlight application, the digital photo frame (DPF), which he dubs “a perfect Christmas gift.” Song also credits demand for DPFs with helping to bring the company’s plant in Guangdong to 100% capacity utilization. Bucking adverse industry trends, Diguang has added capacity over the past year and now has a manufacturing presence in each of the three most important display manufacturing regions in China.
     Providing a context for the recently announced large-volume mobile phone-backlight order from Samsung SDI, Song briefly recapped company history and concluded, “our trajectory is an exciting and promising one.”
     “One tactical approach will be to compete successfully in “upstream” LED disciplines, such as LED chipmaking, LED packaging and driver-IC design ... Another tactical thrust will be to expand in areas outside the TFT-LCD display industry, such as general LED lighting. And we expect our recently announced reorganization into discrete profit centers, each accountable for its own profit/loss profile, to empower our team members to excel in these initiatives,” he states.
     Diguang has a manufacturing subsidiary in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, PRC, and a sales and marketing subsidiary located in the British Virgin Islands.

SigmaTel, China companies collaborate on video players

     SigmaTel is collaborating with leading Chinese manufacturers on next-generation video players powered by SigmaTel’s STMP3700 product family. Working with multiple Chinese OEM/ODMs, including AMAX, Ramos, Foxda and KeenHigh, the company has capitalized its product technology and relationships with these key customers to offer consumers new video players, both in China and the rest of the world.
     “Our 3700 product family has gained momentum, and our customers continue to design-in SigmaTel technology for new products in 2008,” said Phil Pompa, chief executive officer of SigmaTel. “We work closely with our key OEM/ODMs, to allow them to deliver differentiated personal media players with unique feature sets to consumers worldwide.”
     The STMP3700 product family is highly integrated and optimized to ensure a low bill-of-materials, while providing support for multiple video formats in QVGA resolution, extended battery life and the latest NAND flash technologies. This personal media player solution offers over 6 hours of MPEG-4 simple profile video playback, at 30 frames per second, using only a small 400mAh Lithium Ion battery. Additional video formats supported by the 3700 product family are MPEG-4, H.264 and WMV.
     “AMAX has a long standing relationship with SigmaTel, and we are excited to collaborate on the latest 3700 designs,” said Frank Chang, general manager of AMAX’s Marketing Division. “We expect our newest media players based on SigmaTel technology to be showcased at CES 2008 in Las Vegas.”
     Features of SigmaTel’s STMP3700 product family include an industry-standard 90nm, ARM processor for high performance and robust video playback. The STMP3700 product family offers superior video quality, at 30fps and QVGA resolution, in MPEG4, H.264 and WMV formats. In addition, it delivers excellent audio quality and flexible memory and LCD support.
     “Ramos has worked with SigmaTel on 3600 designs, and we look forward to starting our next-generation programs with them,” said HongBo He, general manager of RAMOS in China. “We want to deliver the highest quality audio and video to consumers, and SigmaTel’s technology is a perfect fit for these objectives.”
     SigmaTel is a fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops and markets mixed-signal ICs for the consumer-electronics market. The company’s target market segments include portable media players, printers and digital televisions. SigmaTel is ISO 9001:2000 certified and committed to providing customers with high performance, quality products. More information on SigmaTel is available at www.sigmatel.com.

ZTE, China Netcom to build AVS-IPTV network

     ZTE Corporation (ZTE), a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions further solidified its market position as a leading provider of IPTV network solutions by clinching another major deal in China recently. The company has won the world’s first AVS-IPTV commercial network development bid offered by the China Netcom Group Corporation (CNC), a leading broadband communications and fixed-line telecommunications operator in China. Under the contract, ZTE will be the sole provider of IPTV network solutions for the project.
     As the national audio/video coding and compression standard, AVS is a homegrown intellectual property in China that would enable local providers to save on patent fees imposed by foreign operators. China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) and CNC have been collaborating to drive the industrial implementation of the AVS standard. Trial tests of the use of AVS-IPTV for commercial purposes in Dalian, China, started in November last year, establishing a solid foundation for future IPTV developments, nationally and internationally.
     According to the National Working Group for Intellectual Property Rights Protection in China, AVS is regarded as an important breakthrough in transforming China from a “big producer to a strong producer” in the digital audio and video industry, as a result of the technology’s unique foundation and homegrown nature.
     “We are proud to win the AVS-IPTV commercial network bid with China Netcom,” said Yu Yifang, GM of ZTE Multimedia & Terminal Products. “AVS-IPTV is a technology that is still in its infancy in China, with huge potential for large-scale deployment in the years to come. This deal certainly validates our leading market position as a reliable provider of IPTV network solutions, with a strong in-house R&D capability and multiple IPTV network-project experience, both locally and overseas. We expect the project to play a significant role in the future development of IPTV in China.”
     Establishing the IPTV/AVS commercial network, which required the company to manage a short production cycle, is the first time that ZTE has collaborated with CNC. With strong industry support and guidance from several local organizations, including MII, CNC, CNC Research Centre, Liaoning Netcom and Dalian Netcom, ZTE has achieved optimal performance during the trial testing period, thus ensuring future IPTV subscribers have reliable network services.
     Last year, the company clinched IPTV deals with Beijing Telecom, Shanghai Telecom and China Netcom. ZTE has more than a 50% share of China’s current IPTV product-solutions market.