Meanwhile, the company said it plans to build a new 55,000-square meter campus in Beijing's Chaoyang District under a memorandum of understanding on cooperation with the Beijing municipal government.

"China is extremely important to Nortel Networks, both as a market and as a source for technology talent," said Frank Dunn, president and chief executive officer of Nortel Networks.

"With ongoing emphasis on R&D in China, we are strengthening our presence here to drive the most advanced customer network transformations on a timely basis," he said at a press conference yesterday in Beijing.

"We expect to continue to leverage the technology and innovation we develop in China by deploying it in the global marketplace."

The first phase of the campus, which covers 27,000 square meters, is expected to be completed at the end of 2004.

According to Dunn, Nortel Networks' current R&D facilities in Beijing and Guangzhou will continue to play an important role along with the new campus in developing IP (Internet protocol)--based voice and multimedia services, third generation (3G) wireless services, next generation networking, and other leading edge technology solutions.

When asked about Nortel Networks' 3G strategies in China, the president said the 3G is "dynamic" given the rosy prospects worldwide.

"All the three standards are fundamentally capable as far as technology is concerned," he said, adding the company will keep doing R&D in three standards -- European based WCDMA (Wideband CDMA), US based CDMA2000 and China's homegrown TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access) systems.

In the Chinese market, Nortel Networks teamed up with Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Co Ltd in August to build a laboratory to explore the commercialization of the Chinese TD-SCDMA.

In another development, Nortel Networks announced yesterday that China Unicom is deploying the CDMA2000 1X network, based on Nortel Networks solutions, in China's four leading markets, Chongqing municipality, Zhejiang, Shandong and Heilongjiang provinces.

(China Daily September 17, 2003)