16 February 2011, Barcelona- ZTE and Hutchison 3G Austria have announced that ZTE will build a nationwide LTE/DC-HSPA+ commercial network in Austria. This is an important breakthrough for ZTE's GSM/UMTS/LTE products in Europe following ZTE's wireless network deployment in Germany and Belgium with KPN, its initiatives in Hungary and Montenegro with Telenor, and also in Portugal with Optimus. 

Under the contract, ZTE will build a nationwide wireless access network, core network and bearer network for Hutchison 3G Austria to swap the operator's existing network infrastructure. The network is scheduled to be finished by 2011, which will cover 94% of the country's population with HSPA+ services and provide LTE services in major cities. ZTE will also provide Hutchison 3G Austria managed services for six years.

Hutchison 3G is a world-leading operator with businesses in the U.K., Italy, Austria, Denmark, Australia, Hong Kong and Indonesia among others. Hutchison 3G Austria intends to use the new LTE/DC-HSPA+ network to provide better mobile broadband services to its handset and modem customers. As a world-leading wireless products provider, ZTE will use SDR based Uni-RAN solution to provide advanced LTE/DC-HSPA+ network to customers. The SDR based Uni-RAN solution can help operators largely decrease total cost of ownership (TCO).

The LTE/DC-HSPA+ network is ideal for hybrid network operating and future network upgrades, which can satisfy customers' increasing needs for mobile broadband services, and is the best MBB network operating model for European markets.

Currently the network has been delivered on schedule. To date, about 40% of the planned sites have been swapped successfully which is far ahead of schedule. The performance of the new network, based on dual-carrier technology, has been significantly improved, providing up to 43Mbps download speed to end users, 7 times that of the previous network. It's expected that the network data throughput will double every year over the next 3 years.

"In Austria, the demand for broadband services is growing very fast and the most efficient way to satisfy customers' needs is to build a national mobile broadband network. Hutchison 3G Austria is the first operator in Austria to build a nationwide LTE/DC-HSPA+ network, which will guarantee customers enjoy mobile multimedia services anywhere, anytime," says Mr. Jan Trionow, CEO of Hutchison 3G Austria.

Mr. Shi Lirong, President & CEO of ZTE said: "ZTE has a lot of experience in delivering advanced wireless network to operators. We are very honored to build the LTE/DC-HSPA+ network in Austria with Hutchison 3G Austria and we will continue to provide more first-class products and services to European markets."

About Hutchison 3G Austria

Hutchison 3G Austria GmbH started in May 2003 with the brand 3 as the first sole mobile multimedia provider in Austria. 3 offers multimedia products such as mobile television, music, video calling on the UMTS-handset and in addition provides the classic ways of communication (voice calling, SMS and MMS) and as well mobile broadband. 3 has enriched its offer with popular internet services such as Facebook, Google and eBay on every 3mobile. 3 is the only Austrian mobile provider which offers its own application store for various mobiles. Furthermore 3 provides 60 mobileTV and radio channels on 3mobiles as well on 3data modems. Hutchison 3G Austria GmbH counts 1 million customers (as per September 2010), 27.8 Mio. customers (as per August 2010) worldwide, and is wholly owned by Hutchison Whampoa Limited in Hong Kong.