Ucell, a subsidiary of Sweden’s TeliaSonera, has deployed an LTE network in Uzbekistan, using equipment from Chinese vendor ZTE. The launch brings together two of the key movers in the fledgling LTE market: TeliaSonera and Uzbekistan. TeliaSonera has already launched commercial LTE services in Norway and Sweden, with a number of pilots underway in other markets. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan is now the first country to have two competing live LTE networks in place. Last month, Russian-based Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) switched on an LTE network in the central Asian state, using equipment supplied by Huawei. MTS and Ucell are the country’s first- and second-largest mobile operators, respectively, with a combined 78 percent share of the market, according to Wireless Intelligence data.

According to ZTE, Ucell’s new network supports peak download speeds of 100Mb/s, and uses its software defined radio and Uni-RAN infrastructure solutions. Ucell said that the speeds delivered by the network are “ten times faster than today’s 3G networks” – though most other LTE networks are delivering average rates some way short of the quoted peaks. ZTE said that as of July 2010, it has deployed seven commercial LTE networks and is supporting more than 50 trial deployments in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.