ZTE Corp, one of two Chinese telecom majors currently on a global offensive to take market share has won over a marquee customer - France Telecom. France is one of the hottest DSL markets where four carriers are pushing video-over-DSL and all sorts of neat stuff. There is a price war raging, which is good for consumers, and France Telecom I guess is trying to lower its “costs” as it comes under attack from upstarts. Now I am not sure what kind of ADSL products is ZTE going to be pushing in France, I suspect it is going to be the modems and other backend gear like DSLAMs. The press release is awfully sketchy. ZTE also had snagged a much smaller deal from Portugal Telecom last year as well. Still, this cannot be good news for Alcatel, which is getting out hustled in its own backyard. The significance of a Chinese telecom equipment maker cannot be lost of Alcatel which pretty much had France Telecom business in its back pocket for decades.