Australia's decision to ban Huawei Technologies from bidding for contracts in Australia's $38 billion high-speed broadband network is unfair and Beijing is "deeply concerned," China's Ministry of Commerce said on Friday.

"The Australian side should not, without any proven facts, keep companies away from normal competition for so-called security reasons," Shen Danyang, a ministry spokesperson said in a statement on the ministry's website.

A new report by NRG Expert, a global energy research company, shows the potential of the smart grid market.

The worldwide fixed broadband market continues to grow, despite a surge in mobile broadband adoption. The number of fixed broadband subscribers reached 586.7 million in 1Q 2012, generating service revenue of $47.7 billion, according to research firm ABI Research.

China's ZTE Corp, the world's fourth-largest handset producer and fifth-ranked telecoms equipment maker, posted a third straight fall in quarterly profit mainly due to weak telecoms spending and foreign exchange losses.

ZTE and rival Huawei Technologies Co Ltd have diversified from selling just telecom network gear, where growth has slowed, into consumer electronics gadgets such as smartphones and tablet PCs.

Echelon Corporation, a provider of energy control networking for the smart grid, and Holley Metering Limited, a smart metering vendor in China, on Tuesday announced an agreement under which the two companies will form a new joint venture company in China, Zhejiang Echelon-Holley Technology Co., Ltd. (Echelon-Holley), to focus on the development and sales of advanced smart metering products for China.

Australia has blocked China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd from tendering for contracts in the country's $38 billion National Broadband Network (NBN) due to cyber security concerns, Huawei said on Monday.

ZTE Corp, China's second-largest telecommunications equipment maker, said it will "curtail" its business in Iran following a report that it had sold Iran's largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring telephone and Internet communications.

Reuters reported Thursday that ZTE (Shenzhen, P.R.C.) had signed a $130.6 million contract with the Telecommunication Co of Iran in December 2010 that included the surveillance system.

This week, Chinese telecom equipment makers Huawei and ZTE both announced separate extensions to partnerships in the U.S.

Huawei (Shenzhen, P.R.C.) announced that it will grant contracts totaling $6 billion to Qualcomm, Broadcom and Avago (San Jose, Calif., USA), three California-based communications technology companies which Huawei has worked with in the past.

Apple Inc. has signed a deal with China Telecom to sell its iPhone in China as it looks to boost its share in one of the world's biggest mobile phone market.  China Telecom plans to offer the iPhone starting next month.

While Apple (Cupertino, Calif., USA) has now signed up with two of China's big three carriers, the largest, China Mobile Ltd (Beijing, P.R.C.), with more than 600 million subscribers, doesn't yet have compatible technology.

Cinterion, a provider of cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) communication modules, announced on Tuesday that Linyang Electronics, an electronic information enterprise in the smart meter market, is integrating Cinterion's tiny BGS2 in their smart metering products and power utilization management terminals.