Huawei announces eAccess 3G/4G contract win

The Chinese equipment vendor Huawei has announced that it has won a contract to supply a nationwide 3G/4G convergence network for Japanese operator eAccess, which provides cellular services under the ‘eMobile’ brand. Huawei is providing eAccess with an end-to-end SingleRAN convergent solution, including radio access network (RAN), core network and terminal devices. The vendor says this will be the first network in the world to utilise 3G UMTS and 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies in the 1700MHz spectrum band. Last week, Ericsson was also named as a major supplier for the eAccess mixed mode network rollout. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, eAccess is the smallest of Japan’s four cellular network operators, having launched its 3G network under the name eMobile in July 2007; it had 3.77 million subscribers at the end of 2011.