By Helen Meredith

"Australian Financial Review" Wednesday, August 27

Tibetan and Australian officials chose the tallest building in the world's highest capital city, Lhasa, to celebrate the opening of a new digital exchange built by Alcatel in its Liverpool plant in Sydney.

The exchange, one of 45 being supplied by Alcatel Australia for the autonomous regions of Tibet and Ningxia and the Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinhai, will increase Tibet's local phone line capacity from 20,000 to 30,000 lines.

Based on Alcatel's switching platform, the S12, the Tibetan installation brings the number of exchanges supplied to China in the past four years to 61, officials said.

Under the terms of the contracts, Alcatel has trained Chinese and Tibetan technicians at its Liverpool centre to install and maintain the exchanges.

Alcatel's managing director, Mr Ron Spithill, its China manager, Mr Joe Tao Zhou, and an Australian Embassy official, Mr Thomas Connor, joined 300 of Tibet's top officials in Lhasa to mark the commissioning of the new exchange last week.

Commenting on the difficult logistics involved in the project, Mr Spithill said transporting material to Tibet, a land-locked country 3,800 metres above sea level, had been a challenge.