Huawei highlights claim to UFB network

Technology vendor plans NZ technology event

Telco vendor Huawei is holding a three-day event in Auckland ahead of the government’s decision on who it will partner with in the $1.5 billion Ultra Fast Broadband network.

Huawei's Sydney-based government and media relations manager Luke Coleman says the September 15 to 17 event is for telcos, lines companies, independent fibre providers, media and government representatives. It will comprise of technical workshops, an exhibition, and a day-long conference that will be opened by Crown Fibre Holdings chief executive Graham Mitchell and feature a session on the UFB’s network architecture by chief technology officer John Greenhough.

Huawei is the vendor for 2degrees’s mobile network, but the company is hoping to supply fixed- line fibre broadband infrastructure and beat competitors Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens to become the technology partner of the successful bidder or bidders in the UFB.

Huawei’s profile was raised locally when Prime Minister John Key suggested in a TVNZ interview in July that it could be a possible partner in the UFB. “Huawei is a big player, they're bigger round the world, they've got a huge partnership in the United Kingdom for instance. No one's saying they would be the final selected partner in New Zealand but they've certainly got the capacity if they wanted to, to come in and look at doing something like that,” the Prime Minister told television interviewer Guyon Espiner.

Other speakers at Huawei’s upcoming conference include David Storrie, chief executive of Nucleus Connect, the company that is designing, building and operating the active infrastructure for Singapore’s next generation broadband network, as well as Khoong Hock Yun, assistant chief executive of the Singapore regulator overseeing the build. In addition Huawei’s network products CTO Daniel Tang, “the brains behind Huawei’s design for the Singaporean fibre network”, according to Coleman, will also speak.

In the invitation to media, it states there will be a tour of the company’s ‘IP Time’ experience centre in Auckland, which features live demonstrations of in-home and portable devices for use in e-Health, e-commerce and e-education.

Coleman says the company has around 20 staff in New Zealand, and 250 in Australia. It is currently recruiting for a government and media relations expert to be based in Wellington.