Huawei Edged Out of Euro LTE Deal

Telekom Austria AG (NYSE: TKA; Vienna: TKA) will use network equipment from Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) and Nokia Networks for its commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) network rollout, according to industry sources.

With these commercial deals, the European vendors have beaten their Chinese rival, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , which currently supplies the LTE radio network equipment for Telekom Austria's LTE trial in Vienna.

Further details about which vendor will supply what and where were not available as this article was published. A spokeswoman for Telekom Austria would not comment on nor confirm the operator's choice of commercial LTE suppliers.

The Austrian operator has been trialling LTE in Vienna since September 2010, but it has not yet announced when it will launch a full commercial service.

Why this matters
Europe is a hotly contested market for LTE contracts -- even though the region is perceived to lag behind the U.S. and Asia/Pacific when it comes to LTE service availability -- particularly for market leaders Ericsson, Huawei and NSN as operators review existing supplier relationships and evaluate vendors' offerings for the new technology. And every deal matters, no matter how small. (See Europe Set for LTE Laggard Status and Asia/Pac Will Be LTE World Leader .)

New research from In-Stat , for example, shows that Huawei had the most LTE macro base station business in Europe in 2011, while Ericsson and NSN came in second and third, respectively, which EE Times reported here. (See Euronews: Huawei Tops LTE Chart in 2011.)

For more
Here's a review on the LTE action from Austria:

• Telekom Austria Demos LTE
• MWC 2011: Telekom Austria Jazzed About LTE
• Telekom Austria Picks NSN
• H3G Austria Picks ZTE for LTE
• MWC 2011: 3G Austria Dumps NSN for ZTE

— Michelle Donegan, European Editor, Light Reading Mobile