ZTE, a listed company said the deal was signed during a visit of Wu Bangguo, chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress to Sri Lanka.

The statement quoted Lalith de Silva, chief executive of Mobitel as saying ZTE had completed second generation (2G and third generation (3G) base stations at over 1,000 sites earlier.

"The next major development in our technological footprint through this new expansion will be the introduction of the latest long term evolution (LTE) standard, which will be the commercial deployment of 4G Mobile Technology," he said.

ZTE said it has revenues of over 400 million US dollars from Sri Lanka.

Huawei said in a statement that it had inked a deal to renovate and expand Mobitel's network capacity in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo, Galle and Matara, without mentioning the size of the contract.