Northern Telecom Ltd has now completed the first phase of its multi-year investment programme in China, and reckons it has already sold about $260m of switching equipment and other advanced systems, packet data networks and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy transmission systems there: the first-phase investment programme will result in the Canadian increasing the number of its employees in China to about 4,000 over the next three years from about 1,000 today; the first of the projects, based in Shunde, Guangdong Province, is Guangdong-Nortel Telecommunications Switching Equipment Ltd, which will undertake the design, engineering, manufacturing, service, marketing, sale and installation of the DMS SuperNode family of switches, and is owned 40% by Northern Telecom and seven Chinese business partners; an associated DMS Switching Technology Research & Development Centre will develop advanced hardware and software products support the DMS family in China, employing about 275 people; the second project is Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp to operate a wafer foundry in Shanghai and Northern Telecom has 34% with Philips Electronics South-East Asia Holding BV one of the partners; Shanghai Nortel Semiconductor Corp of Shanghai, will design and supply integrated circuits for DMS SuperNode manufacturing; and BUPT-BNR Telecom R&D Centre in Beijing does telecommunications research.
