China Mobile has awarded ZTE a contract for the rollout of its TD-LTE network in five Chinese cities, while the vendor also claims to have become the largest supplier of LTE-enabled mobile devices to the world's biggest operator.

The network contract covers Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shenyang.

China Mobile plans to expand its TD-LTE trial to cover 13 cities with Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Qingdao, Ningbo, Chengdu and Fuzhou joining the five cities covered by the ZTE contract.

The procurement process for the TD-LTE network started in August, with Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and ZTE competing for the right to provide the technology for the network. It is not known if any other vendors have been awarded commercial TD-LTE contracts by China Mobile as part of the same deal.

ZTE was previously awarded 50 percent of the construction work in China Mobile’s TD-LTE rollout in Hong Kong.

The news will be a boost to ZTE which announced on Monday that it expects to report a loss for the first nine months of 2012, with the company’s top executives apologising and agreeing to cut their pay. The financial expectations were attributed to the weak global economic situation, the recognition of low margin contracts in the third quarter, a delay in some overseas projects and a change in the procurement of domestic operators.