KUALA LUMPUR: U Mobile Sdn Bhd is extending its collaboration with ZTE Corp and tying up with China-based Huawei Technologies Co Ltd after inking a three-year partnership agreement with both companies yesterday to roll out 2,000 new network sites.

The new sites will be fully rolled out by the end of next year and will be divided evenly between 3G and 4G sites, said U Mobile chief executive officer Wong Heang Tuck.

“We have already started [setting up the sites]. By the end of this year, we aim to have about 200 sites on air, with the rest coming on by the end of 2015. This is the first of many new network initiatives. We aim to provide a network capacity and coverage that will be on par with leading players,” he said.

U Mobile’s existing strategic partnership with ZTE first started in 2011, when they hooked up to deploy a 100Mbps wireless network across key cities in Malaysia.

Yesterday’s event saw it extending the tie-up with ZTE while Huawei was brought in to provide equipment that can support both 3G and 4G long-term evolution or LTE under a single platform.

U Mobile will be spending up to RM1.5 billion to execute the roll-out, which will be funded via a mix of vendor and shareholder financing.

Of this, between RM900 million and RM1 billion will be spent on the equipment required, while the remainder will be used for the provision of services.

The company currently has about 8,000 2G sites in partnership with Maxis Bhd, and more than 4,000 3G sites across the country.

Wong said the company is looking at “meaningfully” increasing its market share from the 10% it had as at end-2013.

“I think this year, we will see our revenue growing much higher than the industry. Of course, for the full year we will still be at a negative [in terms of earnings], but definitely in a better position than last year,” he said, adding the company is aiming for a double-digit revenue growth.

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 5, 2014.