China Telecom has completed the second phase of its LTE equipment procurement process, contracting five vendors to supply it with kit, it emerged this week.
Huawei and ZTE accounted for more than half of the contract, English language publication C114 reported on Thursday, citing "informed sources".
The sources said that bidding was fierce in this latest procurement round, from which Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell and Ericsson also emerged with a share of the spoils.
In this phase, which began in November, bidders were competing to supply LTE network gear including macro base stations.
The news site points out that the first two phases of procurement are relatively small in scale and will not necessarily reflect the overall picture when it comes to equipment suppliers for China Telecom’s LTE network. There could still be opportunities for other kit makers, it said.
China Telecom has yet to receive a full FDD LTE licence, but it got the go-ahead to start offering trial hybrid FDD/TDD LTE services last summer.
At the time Hong Kong’s The Standard newspaper reported that it should be awarded its full licence by early 2015.
The telco is understandably keen to push on with its FDD LTE rollout. It lost significant ground to market leader China Mobile in terms of subscriber numbers last year as a result of its inability to offer LTE services.
China Mobile launched commercial TD-LTE services just over a year ago and as of the end of November had signed up 71.2 million customers.
