ZTE wins 55% of China Unicom VAS deal

Vendor to supply nodes for MMS, ringback tones, WAP services gateway platforms for operator's GSM network.

ZTE announced on Monday it has been awarded a 55% share of a value-added services (VAS) tender by China Unicom.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Chinese equipment vendor will supply the operator with nodes for its ringback tone platform, MMS management platform and WAP services management gateway.
"ZTE won 17, 14 and 12 nodes for the above three products respectively," said ZTE, in a statement.
The company said that together these elements make up the bulk of the VAS revenues generated on Unicom's GSM network.
The companies did not disclose the value of the contract.
China has more than 1.3 billion population which provides us an enormous opportunity," said Wang Xiang, vice president of ZTE.
He commented that the deal will enable Unicom to extend its VAS offerings nationwide.
"China is one of the driving forces for the development of the global telecom market. Besides our commitment to the international market, we are very much focused on helping China further advance the local telecom infrastructure," he said.
Since announcing the reorganisation of its telecoms industry in May, Chinese operators have awarded a raft of new contracts to a number of equipment makers as they gear up for tougher competition.
China Telecom at the beginning of December awarded a $230 million CDMA upgrade deal to Alcatel-Lucent.
ZTE meanwhile won a 1.33 billion yuan ($200 million) contract to supply the operator with wireless network equipment, as well as technical documents and services.
The Chinese government is also expected to award 3G licences either by the end of 2008 or early 2009, and a number of vendors have already snapped up network deals.
Indeed, ZTE recently won a contract to supply China Mobile with TD-SCDMA equipment along with local rivals Huawei and Datang, as well as Ericsson.