Nokia's telecoms gear venture Nokia Siemens Networks said on Thursday it has put on trial 30 commercial next generation LTE networks globally and is in talks with 15 top-tier operators to build commercial networks.

It's unbelievable how the momentum is growing, this is what we are seeing with our customers, Thorsten Robrecht, Nokia Siemens' head of LTE product management, told Reuters in an interview at the sidelines of an industry conference in Shanghai.

There are big customers which I hope to get very soon under contract, Robrecht said, adding the firm has signed contracts to build 12 commercial LTE networks to date, most of them this year.

Nokia Siemens and industry leader Ericsson have increasingly come up against Chinese newcomers Huawei and ZTE in the global rush to build new long-term evolution (LTE) networks, also known as 4G.

Nokia Siemens and Ericsson beat out Huawei in January for contracts to build a key next-generation LTE network contract from European operator TeliaSonera. But last year they lost out to Huawei on another deal to build an LTE network for Nordic carrier Telenor.

(Reporting by Melanie Lee and Jerry Huang; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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