ZTE Corp has won a contract worth 1.33 billion yuan (US$195.6 million) from China Telecom to expand the telco's newly acquired mobile network, and with this deal it will become the leading player in the domestic CDMA (code division multiple access) network equipment market, the supplier said yesterday.

The deal will likely boost Shenzhen-based ZTE's chances to secure further orders from China Telecom, which plans to invest a total of 80 billion yuan over three years to upgrade its mobile network which it acquired from China Unicom, industry insiders said.

ZTE, the country's biggest public telecom equipment maker, will provide China Telecom wireless equipment for the CDMA network and related services valued at 1.27 billion yuan. The other 61 million yuan will be spent to expand China Telecom's fixed-line network expansion, ZTE said in a statement.

"ZTE now leads the Chinese CDMA market with a one-third share and we are expanding our business globally," the firm said in the statement.

ZTE was involved in 10 of the 12 latest CDMA deals globally, United States-based research firm EFL Wireless said in a note in August.

ZTE also has a 28-percent share of the market for China Mobile's latest TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) network equipment tenders in 28 cities nationwide. ZTE is said to be in a leading position in the bids, several media reported recently. ZTE, however, declined to comment yesterday.

The TD-SCDMA is a home-developed 3G technology. But the two global third generation standards - CDMA 2000 and WCDMA (wideband-CDMA) - are expected to be available in China too. China Unicom will adopt the WCDMA system. China is widely expected to issue 3G licenses next year or even earlier.

Shenzhen-listed ZTE fell 1.87 percent to close at 20.97 yuan yesterday.

(Shanghai Daily November 19, 2008)