ZTE sees good opportunity to penetrate developed markets with LTE

By Anne Morris, Total Telecom, in Geneva

Monday 05 October 2009

Chinese vendor sets out its LTE store.

ZTE said LTE will provide a good opportunity for the Chines e equipment manufacturer to penetrate more developed markets in future as the OFDM-based technology "does not have much to do with the past".
According to Donglin Shen, VP wireless technology and strategy at ZTE, "LTE is a key opportunity for us as we are fairly new in developed markets."
The company has an around 35% share of the Chinese 3G market, and said its global 3G market share has increased over the past year.
Speaking to Total Telecom at ITU Telecom World in Geneva on Monday, Shen added that the market is clearly now converging on LTE, although he noted that operators still come to vendors with questions about when they should deploy the technology, and how they should resolve the thorny issue of voice over LTE.
For its part, ZTE started its LTE research in 2006, and has recently won its first commercial deal in Europe, with Telenor's Montenegro-based Promonte. Shen said ZTE also has a contract with Hong Kong CSL to deploy new base stations that will include LTE when required, and is also one of several vendors whose technology is being trialed by Telefonica.
"We are working with all European operators right now," added Shen. "They are getting familiar with us."
Shen said China Mobile wants to deploy TD-LTE "as soon as possible". The goal is to try and consolidate TD-LTE and FDD LTE into the same set of network and handset requirements; Shen said this should be possible from around 2011/2012.
Shen said ZTE hopes to play a part in early deployments of LTE networks, which are expected in the developed markets from around 2010. On the subject of voice over LTE, Shen said ZTE would support whatever the operators want. "The problem right now is that operators haven't made up their minds," he said. "Operators have to come to an agreement" on how voice over LTE should be deployed.
But Shen stressed that data is the first requirement for LTE, and it will be up to the operators to ensure that they adopt LTE in time to meet future consumer bandwidth requirements.

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