France's Alcatel-Lucent signed frame agreements worth $1.1 billion with China Mobile Ltd. and China Unicom Ltd. to help the mobile operators expand the capacity and coverage of their East Asian mobile networks.

The agreement is a response to the high demand for mobile services in China. Some estimates put the number of Chinese mobile phone users at 500 million.

"China Mobile and Alcatel-Lucent have established a strong relationship through years of close cooperation," said Wang Jianzhou, president of China Mobile, Hong Kong, in a statement.

"Alcatel-Lucent's diverse portfolio â?¦ will enable us to deliver innovative and useful new services to our customers throughout China," he said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and French President Nicolas Sarkozy took part in the formal signing ceremony Nov. 25 in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

The agreement with China Mobile is valued at $884.7 million.

Alcatel-Lucent will provide mobile services supporting China Mobile's network expansion plans. The services include GSM/GPRS/EDGE radio and core networking equipment, mobile applications, IP routers and optical networking equipment.

Alcatel-Lucent will also provide China Mobile with a TD-SCDMA in the operator's trial network to support services such as video streaming, WAP and personal ring-back tones.

The $221 million agreement with China Unicom includes similar end-to-end services in addition to an upgrade of China Unicom's third-generation (3G) CDMA1xEVDO high-speed data network in Macau, famous for its casinos.

"Alcatel-Lucent and China Unicom are in [a] long-term cooperation partnership." said Chang Xiaobing, chairman of China United Telecommunications Corp., Shanghai.

The agreements were secured through Alcatel-Lucent's flagship company in China, Alcatel Shanghai Bell. These contracts follow similar agreements Alcatel-Lucent signed with both operators in May to support the expansion of their respective mobile communications networks.