Huawei has been chosen for six commercial deployments of LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and is conducting 60 trials with carriers around the world, Chen said. Among those is Cox Communications, the U.S. cable operator, which is building its own 3G EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) network using Huawei gear and trying out LTE with the vendor, too. In China, Huawei has a trial of LTE with China Mobile even though that country granted its first 3G carrier licenses only last year. The company also built China Mobile's 3G network, which uses the locally developed TD-SCDMA (Time-Division Synchronous Code-Division Multiple Access) technology.

Last week, StarHub in Singapore announced it will use a software upgrade to its Huawei HSPA+ (High-Speed Packet Access) network to bond two radio channels for higher capacity. The upgrade will roughly double the network's theoretical top speed from 21M bps (bits per second) to 42.2M bps. Channel bonding is one method for increasing network performance using a service provider's existing spectrum, Huawei's Chen said.

Huawei is also supplying StarHub with public femtocells, a new implementation of a technology that has been associated mainly with consumer devices for boosting performance in subscribers' homes. Public femtocells transplant the same concept to open areas, making it easier and less expensive for carriers to fill in coverage holes and ease the strain on heavily used data networks. They can use low-cost broadband connections such as DSL (digital subscriber line) or cable modems. Huawei is also developing LTE femtocells, which may play a critical role in proliferating the next-generation networks.

The company's technology also may help U.S. WiMax provider Clearwire carry out a tricky transition that it hinted at on Wednesday at CTIA. Both Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow and Dan Hesse, CEO of Clearwire majority owner Sprint Nextel, said in keynote speeches that they might someday roll out LTE in addition to WiMax, taking advantage of the large amounts of spectrum they control in many markets.

Huawei is one of three network suppliers for Clearwire, which also uses Samsung Electronics and Motorola. Huawei provides equipment for the carrier's networks in several cities, including Honolulu, according to Clearwire. Chen said the radio-network cabinet that Clearwire uses, called SingleRAN, can accommodate base stations for any type of wireless carrier network and could make this type of dual deployment easier.