On February 23, 2004, the 3GSM World Conference, the grand annual event of GSM world, was convened in Cannes, France.

At this exhibition, ZTE, the leading telecom equipment vendor in global mobile communications, is demonstrating its overall capabilities in providing the operators with one-stop services for 3G network construction. The Company displays its commercial UMTS systems and 3G network smooth migration solutions, and makes an on-site demonstration of streaming media on demand, JAVA download capability and VOD, videophones, multimedia short messages, and other diversified 3G services.

Under the theme of “Let’s 3G”, ZTE will integrate its excellent capabilities in systems, terminals and services to build a sustainable 3G value chain together with the operators, helping them gain more competitive strengths in the 3G market. 

“In 3G network construction, the most concern for the operators is how to quickly deploy the mobile services on a flexible basis but at low cost. In view of this, ZTE has developed a fully open 3G integrated service platform on which new services can be quickly deployed. The new 3G platform aims to help the operators quickly attract more subscribers into the value chain," explained Mr. Xie Daxiong, Senior Vice President of ZTE.

“Our huge investments in 3G R&D, coupled with our profound experience in radio communications network construction, enable us to have more confidence in building the stable, reliable and profitable 3G networks for the operators,” stated Mr. Xie at a press conference on the first day. “We regard the 3G World Conference 2004 in Cannes as a good opportunity for ZTE, where ZTE will showcase its latest R&D progress and service capabilities in the 3G area to global customers, especially those in the developed regions.”

As a leading provider of communications equipment and solutions in China, ZTE has been developing at a rocketing compound growth rate of 34% in the “winter” of global telecom industry over the past three years. With its in-depth perception of the telecom products, ZTE flexibly applied its successful experience in the Chinese telecom market to its global market development, and achieved the remarkable soaring development in the international market.

Up to now, ZTE’s wireless network products, data products and optical transmission products have been widely deployed in the markets of developing countries and moderately developed countries. In particular, ZTE has become one of the top brands in wireless communications in the world. ZTE offers comprehensive mobile communication equipment product lines of 2G, 2.5G and 3G, comprising system equipment and terminal products spanning both GSM and CDMA standards. ZTE’s full package of GSM and CDMA products have entered over 30 countries and regions, and accordingly ZTE has become the largest Chinese CDMA equipment vendor with the most lines of wireless communication products sold overseas.

ZTE’s outstanding market performance is closely related to its emphasis on the  independent R&D and enormous investments for years. Early in 1995, ZTE embarked on tracing the UMTS technologies, and initiated the R&D of UMTS products in 1998. To date, ZTE’s investment in UMTS has amounted to over US$ 2 billion. Currently, ZTE has over 2,000 engineers engaged in UMTS R&D.

To keep pace with the latest developments in UMTS technology, ZTE has also set up the European Research Institute in Sweden, specializing in the R&D of critical UMTS radio technologies and the introduction of overseas advanced R&D talents. The Institute has achieved great breakthroughs and progress in multiple critical UMTS technologies.

After years of build-up, ZTE rolled out a complete set of R4-based UMTS commercial systems in 2002. The maturity for its commercial application has been widely proved by its excellent performance in many stringent tests, such as the Phase I and II tests by the MTNET Laboratory of Chinese Ministry of Information Industry, the test by the China Mobile R&D Center, the UMTS system conformance test by Guangzhou Research Institute of China Telecom, and dozens of outfield tests in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Jinan.