VIENNA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese telecommunications equipment maker ZTE has been helping its Austrian partner build a "dream network," the CEO of a leading Austrian telecommunications provider said Wednesday.
"To achieve great results you need great partnership, and that was the atmosphere right from the beginning of our cooperation with ZTE," Jan Trionow told Xinhua at the Vienna office of Hutchison Drei Austria GmbH. "We wanted to achieve something really big. We had a vision of building a dream network."
In 2010 when Hutchison Drei just started to form a partnership with ZTE, it is the latest entrant in the Austrian 3G market.
Today, with advanced technologies coming with close cooperation with the Chinese company, Hutchison Drei has become a leading participant in local telecommunication market, capable of fulfilling customers' demands for ever more and ever faster data, according to Trionow.
In June, Hutchison Drei partnered with ZTE to deploy and activate a total of 20 5G sites in the city of Linz, achieving continuous 5G coverage for the first time ever in an Austrian city.
According to Trionow, Hutchinson Drei is aiming for full 5G coverage of the whole country, part of its new vision of building a dream network.
He also told Xinhua that his company is now ranked the world's number two in terms of monthly usage per SIM card, which means very high capacity for meeting customers' demands -- to put it into perspective, Austrian customers use ten times more data than German customers.
As one of the largest Chinese companies operating in Austria, ZTE Austria GmbH employs more than 100 people, with over 60 percent being local Austrians or from European Union members, the company said on its website.
The key factors of ZTE's success story in Austria include its ability to bring cutting-edge technology fast to the market, having a strong team with multicultural background, respecting rules and being proactive, among other things, according to its Senior Vice President Xiao Ming.
"As long as we optimise and fine-tune networks and mobile services we offer to customers of Hutchison Drei, we are forcing other operators to act, to invest additionally to keep up with the competition, so the whole industry has been constantly improving because of a healthy competition," said Xiao. "We are empowering the local community."
ZTE is one of the major suppliers for wireless products and solutions in the Austrian market, accounting for a market share of up to 50 percent in the core network section there.
"We are part of the Austria economy," said Christian Woschitz, CEO of ZTE Austria GmbH.
"At the moment we see good basis for continued cooperation with ZTE," said Trionow. "It is about the service to the country, the consumers and the business that everybody needs."
Hutchison Drei also highlighted the importance of cyber security, especially when it comes to 5G. "We will take good measures to make sure our networks are safe and this is also a joint effort."
"We are a bit concerned of the developments in the world and the threat for free trade, but we see an environment where we can take the benefits of the global information and communications technology business and strong players such as ZTE being part of it," said Trionow.
