ZTE Reportedly Picks Up Half China Telecom CDMA Contract

China Telecommunications Corp., the parent company of Hong Kong listed fixed line operator China Telecom Corp. says that it has formally awarded a CDMA tender, estimated to be worth as much as US$1.5 billion. This initial contract is a prelude to a predicted much larger network infrastructure tender, thought to be worth upwards of US$10 billion.

The company hasn't given a break down of the tender, but said that the winners are China's ZTE Corp. and Huawei - along with Alcatel-Lucent's local subsidiary, Alcatel Shanghai Bell and Fujian Fujitsu. Local media reports have however suggested that ZTE has picked up half the contract.

ZTE won the entire contract for building the mobile positioning system service and part of the contracts for the gateway of multimedia message service, mobile internet gateway and other supporting infrastructure.

It had been suggested that Huawei is tendering a surprisingly low bid for the core network in order to earn money from subsequent base station sales.

China Telecommunications Corp. plans to invest CNY80 billion (US$11.7 billion) over the next three years in the CDMA network it is acquiring from China Unicom's parent, the company's listed unit, China Telecom Corp., said in a statement last month.

Posted to the site on 21st August 2008