ZTE and U Mobile Announce Partnership on 5G Mobile Network Research in Malaysia

ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with U Mobile Sdn Bhd on the development of Pre5G mobile broadband technologies, deepening the two companies’ partnership on next-generation network innovations.

The partnership will help U Mobile deliver substantial network performance upgrades using ZTE’s proprietary Pre5G technologies including Massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output). The MOU, signed in Shenzhen by Too Tian Jen, Chief Technology Officer of U Mobile, and Steven Ge, Managing Director of ZTE Malaysia, also covers collaboration between the two companies on research and development of 5G technologies, in addition to Pre5G.

“U Mobile is constantly exploring new technology that will provide best in class user experience to our customers,” Mr. Too said. “We see 5G technology as the technology that would support the ever increasing communication needs of the future. The collaboration with ZTE will also support our government’s vision of being a Smart Digital Nation by 2020.”

5G research is key to ZTE’s strategy to become a global leader in the developments of next-generation network technology. In June 2014, ZTE was the first vendor to propose the Pre5G concept, and the company launched Pre5G base station integrating the BBU and RRU at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March 2015, enabling carriers to emulate the behavior of future 5G networks on existing 4G LTE network infrastructure.

ZTE’s Pre5G base station enhances spectral efficiency of current 4G LTE networks between four to six times by using Massive MIMO technology. ZTE is also leading the industry in research of other 5G technologies including Multi-User Shared Access (MUSA) and Ultra Dense Network (UDN).

“ZTE is delighted to work on 5G technologies with U Mobile, the leader in network innovations in Malaysia. ZTE is making major investments in 5G to lead the industry in the research and standardization of this key technology of the future,” said Mr. Ge.

Being known as the data-centric telco, 70% of U Mobile subscribers are smartphone users. Looking at the recent consumer behavior study in early 2015, the Malaysian public spends an average of 3 hours and 39 minutes browsing the Internet for work, information, searching and entertainment, which is ranked the highest in the South East Asia region.

ZTE’s collaboration on Pre5G research with U Mobile follows the announcements of similar partners with SoftBank Corporation in Japan, and KT Corporation in Korea.

ZTE’s Pre5G Massive MIMO products have won numerous global awards. In March, ZTE Pre5G Massive MIMO products won the Innovative Solution and Fastest Market Development Award 2014 at the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) awards in Barcelona. In May, ZTE and China Mobile won the Wireless Network Infrastructure Innovation award for Pre5G products at the Global Telecom Business (GTB) Innovation Awards. In June, ZTE was awarded the 2015 Global Technology Innovation Award in 5G Networks by Frost & Sullivan, one of the world's leading consulting firms, in recognition of ZTE's outstanding performance and achievements in 5G technology innovation, and leading position in the industry.