TV unit gears up for battle with Unicom

A Shanghai Broadcasting and Television Bureau unit plans to bolster the data-transmission capacity of its Internet network more than fourfold, according to equipment supplier Juniper.

The move would allow the bureau's technology unit, Shanghai Broadcasting and Television Information Technology (SBTIT), to become a credible competitor to telecoms giants such as China Unicom and China Telecommunications on Internet access service in Shanghai, a Juniper executive said.

Wendell Zhao, regional sales manager for Juniper China, the mainland branch of United States network-equipment maker Juniper, said the company was in talks with SBTIT to upgrade the Internet network operated by SBTIT.

The network was owned by the Shanghai municipal government, he said.

It runs on asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) equipment provided by Canadian network equipment giant Nortel Networks five years ago.

'Their ATM network has fallen behind on [data transmission] speed and capacity, which made it impossible to compete with that provided by China Telecom,' he said.

The upgrade will boost its data transmission speed to 2.5 gigabits per second. Mr Zhao said Juniper and Nortel had agreed in principle to co-operate on the project should a contract be awarded to them, and they hoped to complete it by September.