Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a major telecom equipment vendor in China, and Ericsson Inc have won contracts worth RMB 50 million from China Telecom Corp Ltd, sources reported.

Huawei and Ericsson will be part of a project to update the 10 Gbps DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) backbone network connecting Yangtze River Delta cities that include Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou.

Huawei won about 80% of the contracts in question, said sources.

Product delivery is scheduled for the third quarter, while commercial operation of the updated network is set for late this year.

Huawei this year aims to maintain steady growth and to sign US$ 30 billion worth of contracts as compared to US$ 23 billion in 2008. Its net profit grew 20% to US$ 1.15 billion in 2008 from US$ 956.9 million a year earlier.