The Chinese infrastructure vendor ZTE has announced that Telefonica is to use its equipment to test LTE in Spain. While other manufacturers, particularly Huawei, have been announcing LTE trials with leading service providers, Telefonica is the first Tier 1 operator win for ZTE.
According to a report carried by Unstrung, ZTE plans to test LTE in Spain during Q3/09 in parallel with similar trials with Hong Kong-based CSL, which is part of Australian-based Telstra International.
VP of international wireless marketing at ZTE, Xu Ming, said the field trials in Spain and Hong Kong, which will involve FDD-LTE access equipment and evolved packet core technology, are clearly important for the vendor. "Wireless is the core business for ZTE," he noted. "Our main human resources are focused on this. And LTE is the main resource for (the migration towards) 4G, so we will invest much more in LTE."
However, ZTE is not the first vendor Telefonica has selected to test LTE. Ericsson also already completed trials--and is the incumbent, and it would seem very likely that Nokia Siemens Networks will be invited in the future--and maybe even Huawei.
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