RIO DE JANEIRO – Infrastructure vendor Alcatel-Lucent is looking to get back into the Brazilian market, having sat out the 3G evolution. The company was a significant player in deploying 2G networks and is hoping to become a player again with LTE services.
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Alcatel-Lucent was one of three companies chosen by Brazilian carrier Oi to provide LTE equipment. “It marks our return to the wireless [market]. We have invested and globally our market share is high and we aim to [compete] in the region,” said Jonio Foigel, president for Brazil and service leader for Latin America at Alcatel-Lucent, during this week’s Futurecom event (read all pieces).
Alcatel-Lucent is currently running an LTE pilot project in Rio deo Janeiro’s Leblon neighborhood for Oi. “We manage some sites. The whole contract is in phase of definition,” noted Foigel.
Of the four big Brazilian carriers that acquired spectrum licenses to provide LTE, Telefónica and Claro have both tapped Ericsson and Huawei as technology providers, while Oi has selected Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Network. TIM Brasil has not yet announced network partners, though it did note it was nearing that process.
However, Foigel did not discount that carriers that have already chosen their primary vendors could hire Alcatel-Lucent for future LTE deployments or femtocells projects. Alcatel-Lucent has three femtocell contracts that have been signed in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. The company also has ten metrocell trials across the Caribbean and Latin America region, using both metrocell equipment for 3G and LTE, in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Uruguay. Alcatel-Lucent has also closed deal with Telefónica to provide femtocells throughout Europe and South America.
To meet demand, Foigel said it was investing about $5 million on human capital, including hiring and training employees.
Osvaldo di Campli, Alcatel-Lucent’s president of the CALA region, explained that Brazil, Mexico and Colombia were currently the more important nations to the company. “We had a double digit growth in the first six months of this year in Latin America region,” di Campli noted.
Submarine cable
At Futurecom, Alcatel-Lucent also announced it had signed a turnkey contract with Seaborn Networks to build Seabras-1, a new 10,700 km submarine cable system that will create a direct route between New York and Sao Paulo, with a branch to Fortaleza, Brazil. The project is part of Alcatel-Lucent’s plans to deploy five underwater cables.
The 100 gigabit per second (100G) Seabras-1 system is expected to deliver new capacity on the primary route for the majority of Internet, data and voice traffic between South America and the rest of the world. In addition, the new system is expected to support a variety of consumer and business broadband services between two of the world’s most connected societies.
The Alcatel-Lucent solution to be deployed for the project includes an integrated 100G wet plant of cable and high bandwidth repeaters, power feed equipment, and its 1620 Light Manager submarine line terminal equipped with coherent technology.
