Telecom Lead India: Bharti Airtel will launch India’s
first TD LTE / 4G services in Kolkata on April 10. ZTE, the Chinese telecom
equipment maker, will be the backbone of its network in Kolkata. How ZTE became
the best choice for Airtel in Kolkata when other equipment vendors such as
Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei were pinning their hopes on
LTE launches in India.
ZTE says it is a leader in developing LTE technologies
and has applied for 381 essential patents (EPs) for LTE standards, which
account for approximately seven percent of the total number of EP applications
globally.
ZTE has won 30 contracts for LTE commercial application
and has deployed test networks in cooperation with more than 100 operators
across the globe.
To date, ZTE has signed three contracts related to
deploying and upgrading 3.5GHz TD-LTE networks in Asia-Pacific and Africa. ZTE
is a major global vendor driving the use of 3.5GHz and 3.6GHz bands. The use of
these bands has now been approved as an industry standard by the 3rd Generation
Partnership Project.
ZTE also has helped operators like Japan’s Softbank,
Sweden’s Hi3G and China Mobile successfully deploy TD-LTE networks.
ZTE is dedicated to becoming the world’s No. 1 TD-LTE
brand.
On innovation front, ZTE is spending almost 10 percent of
its revenue. ZTE aims to increase its current share of LTE essential patents
from 7 percent to 10 percent by 2012. The company will also commit more R&D
resources to accumulate essential patents and adopt a pro-active approach in
improving 4G and incubating 4G+ standards.
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), ZTE filed for the most PCT patents of any company worldwide in 2011
with 2,826 filings. Of these, more than 60 percent were related to smart
terminals and new technologies such as LTE/3G, cloud computing and The Internet
of Things. The company’s 4G/LTE patent applications accounted for 7 percent of
patents applied for by global telecom vendors.
The share of LTE essential patents is a result of ZTE’s
continuous R&D investment in the LTE-related key technologies since 2004. As
of the end of 2010, ZTE had submitted more than 6800 proposals to 3GPP, of
which more than 3900 proposals involved LTE/SAE technologies, and had made more
than 2900 LTE-related patent applications.
The organization offers a full range of LTE base stations,
including widely distributed macro stations.
On 20 March 2012, ZTE released the world’s first 3.5GHz
high-power TD-LTE distributed base station. The base station has wide coverage
and transmission power of 80W. In addition, its RF module supports a 4-port
antenna, with each port capable of transmission power of 20W. The base station
also has interference suppression and carrier aggregation features. This
increases site coverage by more than 25 percent, reducing operator network
development costs.
Airtel is pioneering 4G TD LTE India. Can ZTE convince
other Indian telecom operators such as Aircel, Reliance Industries, Tikona,
Qualcomm, etc.
