Aircel selects ZTE for 4G network roll out

Indian telecom service provider Aircel has selected Chinese equipment maker ZTE to deploy 4G LTE network in India.

Under the first deployment phase, ZTE will deploy 4G LTE network for Aircel in Chennai, Rest of Tamil Nadu (RoTN) circle and few other business critical circles.

Aircel presently holds broadband wireless access (BWA) licenses for eight telecom circles, acquired in 2010.

The telco has also been executing a major overhaul of its network to address the growing data demand. ZTE said that it has enabled Aircel with high capacity and capability solutions with access agnostic functions for 2G, 3G and 4G LTE services.

“We are happy to partner with ZTE for the deployment of our 4G LTE Networks in India. With this association, we are confident in delivering ‘next-generation’ networks, critical to meet the growing demand of data in the country,” Anupam Vasudev, CMO, Aircel said.

“The huge demand for internet enabled devices, such as smartphones and tablets among the largely young population, along with increase in consumption of data on internet and rising demand for content are some of the factors fuelling the exponential growth in data,” Vasudev explained.

The 4G LTE network will boost enterprise and retail business for Aircel.

Xu Dejun, CEO, ZTE India said that the company will plan, design, supply and deploy LTE ecosystem for Aircel.

In the initial phase of our rollout, ZTE aims to offer data speeds in excess of 65 Mbps in the country. “With this alliance, we have strongly established ourselves as the partner of choice for the telecom operators in the country; to develop and maintain their LTE ecosystem and also contributed to our long term vision of developing sustainable LTE in India,” added Dejun.

ZTE has been working with Aircel since 2008, supporting the 2G-3G rollout in three circles of the north zone. The equipment vendor is also the key vendor of Aircel in Next Generation Networks (NGN) for Pan India.

This announcement comes at a time when ZTE completes the migration of Aircel’s data services to ZTE’s 4G LTE evolved packet core for Chennai and ROTN circles.

ZTE said that the fulfilment of the evolved packet core deployment in the south zones further bolsters the long term partnership between the two companies.