New Delhi, Dec 30 (IANS): Telecom service provider Aircel has tied up with telecommunications equipment and network solutions provider ZTE for deploying 4G long term evolution (LTE) networks in the country, a company statement said here Monday.

In the first stage, the LTE deployment will be initiated in Chennai, Rest of Tamil Nadu (RoTN) and few other business critical circles. LTE is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.

“We are fully committed to plan, design, supply and deploy state-of-the-art LTE ecosystem, which will help Aircel offer unprecedented experience to their customers. 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. In the initial phase of our rollout, we aim to offer our customers some of the highest data speeds in the country - in excess of 65 Mbps,” Xu Dejun, chief executive officer, ZTE India said.

This tieup will boost enterprise and retail business for Aircel. Earlier Aircel won 3G spectrum in 13 circles and broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum in eight circles

“We believe that data is the growth engine of the future and a cutting edge technology such as 4G LTE has the ability to empower consumers like never before. 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,” Anupam Vasudev, CMO, Aircel said.

ZTE is one of the front-runners in developing LTE technologies and till date has applied for 381 essential patents (EPs) for LTE standards, which account for approximately seven percent of the total number of EP applications globally.