Telecom service provider Aircel has selected ZTE to roll outs its 4G LTE services.
ZTE is currently handling Bharti Airtel’s 4G roll out in Kolkata telecom circle. ZTE is also one of the main 4G equipment suppliers to China Mobile.
Top mobile broadband equipment makers such as Ericsson, NSN, Huawei, Samsung and Alcatel-Lucent were eyeing the LTE network deal.
Aircel 4G is looking at enhancing revenue from enterprise and retail customers.
Currently, Airtel is the only the telecom operator to launch 4G service in India’s 4 cities including Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune and Chandigarh. Airtel is expected to launch 4G on TD-LTE network in Delhi shortly.
Aircel will be competing with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio Infocomm, which is expected to unveil 4G next year.
Aircel will start LTE deployment in Chennai, Rest of Tamil Nadu (RoTN) and few other business critical circles.
In the initial phase of rollout, Aircel aims to offer customers some of the highest data speeds in the country – in excess of 65 Mbps.
ZTE completed the migration of Aircel’s data services to ZTE’s 4G LTE evolved packet core for Chennai and RoTN circles.
The telecom equipment vendor supplies 2G and 3G gear in three circles of the north zone. ZTE is also the key vendor for Aircel in Next Generation Networks (NGN) for Pan India.
Anupam Vasudev, CMO, Aircel, said the demand for internet enabled devices, such as smartphones and tablets among the largely young population, along with increase in consumption of data on internet and rising demand for content are some of the factors fuelling the exponential growth in data.