Hutchison Whampoa’s Austrian 3G operation, 3 Austria, on Wednesday switched on its commercial LTE network in Vienna, with a plan to roll out to other major cities in coming months.

3 Austria took delivery of the LTE and HSPA+ network equipment from Chinese vendor ZTE, which will also provide management and maintenance for the network.

The LTE network deployment will dramatically reduce operating expenses and introduce flexible and efficient networking through the use of self-optimising networks (SON) functionality, the manufacturer said.

The LTE basestations used are said to support a maximum uplink throughput of 300Mbps and a maximum downlink throughput of 900Mbps, with capability to support a future LTE-A protocol.

3 is the smallest operator in the country, with 1.3 million users at the end of September. It falls behind Orange with 2.1 million, T-Mobile with nearly four million and market leader Mobilkom, owned by Telekom Austria, with 5.2 million users.