March 30, 2011 — 1:43pm ET | By Paul Rasmussen

The world\'s first dual-mode LTE networks will be built in Sweden and Denmark by the Scandinavian operator Hi3G using equipment supplied by ZTE.

The deal, which highlights the growing enthusiasm for supporting both TDD/FDD modes, will enable Hi3G to make best use of the 50MHz of TDD spectrum it has acquired in Sweden, and its 25MHz of TDD spectrum in Denmark.

Peder Ramel, CEO at Hi3G, said that it chose ZTE to supply additional 3G equipment for the company\'s 900MHz and 2.1GHz rollout, together with a dual-mode LTE solution, because of the low cost of ownership, and the possibility to house three different mobile standards in the same physical infrastructure.

"Furthermore, ZTE advanced LTE dual-mode solution and quick consignment responses really meet our requirements," Ramel said.

The ZTE equipment will be based upon its Uni-RAN Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology, which will enable Hi3G to support a variety of mobile standards and frequency bands. The radio technology should also enable Hi3G to upgrade this new base station technology by downloading software updates.

However, while Hi3G mentioned 2011 as its planned launch date for LTE TDD/FDD, Aero 2 in Poland indicated last month that it was targeting sometime in April for when it will launch its converged FDD/TDD LTE network to go live using equipment from Huawei.

In February at Mobile World Congress, China Mobile, Bharti Airtel, Softbank Mobile, Vodafone, Clearwire, E-Plus, and Aero2 announced the formation of the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) to promote the ecosystem for TD-LTE.