Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corporation has announced that UQ Communications, the mobile WiMAX license holder in Japan, has started deploying the WiMAX Pico base stations developed by ZTE in collaboration with Hitachi.

The initial scale of this project will be over 1,200 base stations and the WiMAX Pico base stations will gradually enter commercial use in the entire country of Japan.

UQ Communications is a subsidiary of Japan's KDDI, which is reportedly the second largest mobile operator in Japan. UQ Communications started providing WiMAX services in Japan from July 2009 and now has over 370,000 users.

The Pico base station is an important and indispensable network element in the high-speed wireless 4G network. ZTE, in partnership with Hitachi, has been leading the industry in terms of Pico deployment in time division duplex networks. The successful cooperation with Hitachi and UQC in the WiMAX network construction reinforces ZTE's strengths and expertise in the TDD broadband wireless field.

The ZXMBW E9201 unit was apparently selected by Hitachi for this project due to its small size, light weight, zero footprint, flexible installation, and rapid deployment. The unit can be used indoors and outdoors. In addition, the device has low power consumption and green design features. It supports UL 64QAM and adopts high-efficiency data communication and high anti-interference technologies such as MIMO, CSM and FFR to implement high-speed data communication.