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ZTE's aggressive moves into the North American market may be paying off. Yesterday, ZTE executives said they have secured a CDMA contract with an unnamed wireless carrier for a ground-up EV-DO overlay, giving the company its first entry point into the highly competitive North American CDMA market.

The Chinese wireless and wireline vendor is in force at Supercomm 2005, showing off a broad array of wireless base stations, handsets, DSLAMs and networking gear, all of which it is introducing into North America. Though the only new product unveiled was a 1X EV-DO PC card, ZTE used the opportunity to make its presence known.

While he would not reveal the name of the carrier itself or any of the specifics of the deal, ZTE Vice President Ye Wei Min said that ZTE is deploying a complete EV-DO upgrade over another vendor's network, supplying new base stations and radio access gear for a price comparable to an upgrade of the existing CDMA network.

Ye said that broaching the Tier 2 market is part of ZTE's strategy in North America as it tries to build its credentials in a wireless infrastructure market dominated by Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks. ZTE already has proven products that are deployed globally in both the wireline and wireless worlds, Ye said. It just has to make itself known to the North American carrier community.

"We have to convince our customers here that we are reliable," Ye said. "We have to establish our brand and our credibility."