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SCMP Reporter

Mainland telecommunications equipment vendor Huawei Technologies and Ericsson of Sweden were the biggest winners in the tender for China Unicom (Hong Kong)'s nationwide 3G network construction contract, industry sources said yesterday.
Unicom is building the world's largest 3G mobile network based on  Europe-developed WCDMA technology. The company was awarded a 3G licence earlier this month and  will invest 60 billion yuan (HK$68.06 billion) to build 3G networks in 282 cities this year.
The tender was understood to cover 55 cities in 30 provinces.
Huawei,  and United States-based Motorola, which outsourced manufacturing parts to Huawei, won a 30.6 per cent share of the tender.
Ericsson and its partners secured  a 25.6 per cent share.
ZTE Corp, which does not have a significant portion of the global WCDMA equipment market,  surprised the market by clinching a 21.5 per cent share of the tender.
The sources said the company would provide network equipment in 17 major provinces and cities,  including Guangdong, Zhejiang and Fujian.
The other winning bidders were Nokia Siemens Networks, which gained an 11.1 per cent share, and Alcatel Lucent, which took 10.2 per cent.
Market  speculation suggested that ZTE placed an  especially low bid for the tender.   The firm was ranked third in the technology index in the tender.
'We believe ZTE's high market share is  the result of a low-price strategy and its high market share in Unicom's GSM network, which enable ZTE to create a high synergy between the 2G and 3G networks,' said Credit Suisse analyst Wallace Cheung, yesterday.
Industry sources said ZTE was able to provide new technology to support 3G, 3.5G and even 4G mobile technologies at a low cost.
The company has  developed a new 3.5G technology (HSPA plus), which supports download speeds of 21 megabits per second, much faster than  3G download speeds of 384 kilobits per second.
ZTE shares yesterday gained 2.58 per cent to HK$19.90 on the better than expected tender results. Unicom fell 0.87 per cent to HK$6.84.
Grand scheme
China Unicom plans  to build the world's largest 3G network
Unicom's network investment for 282 cities this year totals, in yuan: 60b yuan



Huawei and Ericsson  win Unicom 3G tender