Chinese telecoms equipment maker ZTE has won a €200 million contract to build a mobile network for Telenor in Hungary, it has been announced.
The deal further cements the Chinese company’s position as a key supplier to European telecoms operators.
Under the terms of the contract, ZTE will build a mobile network for as many as 4.5 million users for Telenor in Hungary. It will provide the European carrier with radio and core infrastructure over the next five years.
The Hungary contract follows ZTE’s deployment of a Wimax network for Telefónica in Spain and the building and upgrading of mobile networks for Dutch operator KPN, as well as other Telenor affiliates in India and Montenegro.
ZTE said it expected several other large contracts from European operators to come through over the next couple of months.
With $9 billion in revenues last year, ZTE is the world’s seventh-largest global network equipment maker. The company’s European rivals include Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel Lucent.
Network equipment makers are currently competing to build 4G LTE networks—seen as the future of mobile communications with their high-speed data capabilities.
ZTE has rolled out seven LTE commercial networks and 50 trial LTE networks globally to date.
Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Telenor provides voice, data, content and other communication services in 14 countries across Europe and Asia. By the end of the first half of 2010, the company had 184 million subscribers worldwide.
