ZTE ships home-grown LTE modem in USB dongle

AUSTIN, USA: ABI Research reported that ZTE is shipping a home-grown LTE modem inside one of its own LTE USB dongles. The ZTE ZX297502 is a second-generation LTE modem from ZTE.

Jim Mielke, VP of engineering at ABI Research, comments: "ZTE recently announced the WiseFone 7510 LTE modem for release early this year but the 7510 is a third generation LTE chip. The first generation was mainly a prototype; the second generation was the first real production chip and is certainly the basis for the 28nm 7510 scheduled to be released early 2014."

The ZX297502 is strictly a modem baseband; it is accompanied by ADI and ACP transceivers, and a TI power management unit (PMU).

A complete teardown of the ZTE LTE chipset and accompanying chips is available from ABI Research's Teardown Service.