China Unicom awarded a upgradation contract for its China 169 backbone network to Huawei Technologies with the project set to commence from March 2010 to be fully operational by June 2010.

As part of the contract, Huawei wil deploy its NE5000E cluster router system to provide four new backbone nodes in Chengdu, Xi''an, Chongqing and Wuhan. According to Huawei, the system has a 2.56 Tb/s port capacity and can be easily upgraded to 200 Tb/s to accommodate future traffic growth with the system designed for energy efficiency as well.

China Unicom aims to ease the network traffic pressure in Southwest China and Northwest China.

"With Huawei’s cluster router and professional services expertise, the upgrade of this network will support China Unicom’s Broadband Acceleration Strategy and provide the enhanced capacity, flexibility and scalability necessary to address the bandwidth demands of its growing consumer base," says Zha Jun, president of Network, Huawei.