Huawei sees commercial 4G networks doubling in 2011

HONG KONG: China's top telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies said on Tuesday it expects to double its number of fourth generation commercial networks in 2011, meeting a need for more bandwidth to power devices such as Apple's iPhone.

The number of trial Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks that Huawei is building is also expected to rise to 100 in 2011 from 70 this year, the head of its LTE business unit Ying Weimin said.

"There is growing demand everywhere around the world, especially Europe and the Scandinavian countries in particular," Ying, an engineer by training, told Reuters in an interview. "There is broad demand for the technology everywhere, and countries like Germany even want coverage in rural areas."

A number of telecoms operators including Verizon Wireless and China Mobile have expressed interest in implementing LTE on their networks, helping to support the bandwidth that smartphones need to operate on.