Drei CTO Matthias Baldermann said, "Hutchison Drei Austria will continue to provide the best experience to our customers. We will explore new technologies to better meet their growing needs. We expect ZTE to stay pacemaker for important technology developments and this partnership shall derive technology advances tangible to our customers."

ZTE CTO Xu Huijun said, "As the world's leading provider of ICT solutions, ZTE is a pioneer in the field of 5G, and considers it to be a core strategy. We believe that the application of Pre5G will help Hutchison Drei Austria maintain its performance as the best network in Austria, and enable it to build a world-class network."

In 2015, ZTE's Pre5G Massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) base station passed field tests on many operators' networks, and will be commercially available on a large scale in 2016.

In July last year, the company signed a MOU with Japanese SoftBank Corp to collaborate on research and development on Pre5G mobile communications networks technology.

The agreement builds on existing cooperation between SoftBank and ZTE on technologies including Massive MIMO, UDN (ultra-dense networks) and MUSA (multi-user shared access).

Under the MOU, the two companies will cooperate on R&D, evaluation and verification of mobile communications solutions based on ZTE's Pre5G technology.

The company announced later that it will market Pre5G technology in at least ten countries and regions across Asia and Europe in 2016.