by Ek Heng, Asia Pacific Correspondent
Huawei Technologies continues to make inroads outside of its homeland of China. This month the company announced that it has won a US$235 million project to build Costa Rica’s first 3G cellular network which is expected to be ready for operations by end of this year.
Huawei was pitted against fellow competitor from China, ZTE Corporation and Nokia. The bid by Huawei at US$583 million for 1.5 million lines is reportedly double the cost provision by ICE which budgeted US$225 million. However, the new order is for capacity of 935,000 lines. ICE has a monopoly as cellular operator in the country offering GSM services though a law has been passed last year to liberalize the market.
Bearing testimony to its technological leadership, Huawei also announced in January that it was chosen by TeliaSonera to implement the world’s first commercial 4G/LTE network in Oslo, Norway.
Its track record in implementing new technologies includes the launch of the world’s first femtocell service last November with telco Starhub in Singapore which it followed up with another contract to upgrade wireless network to HSPA+ by Q2 09 to support 21 Mbps mobile download speeds.
Huawei’s success as a next generation network equipment manufacturer and market savvy has been acknowledged by the media and industry researchers. It was named by BusinessWeek as one of “The World’s Most Influential Companies.” A total of 10 companies with winning strategies in their industries made it to the list and they include Google, Microsoft, News Corp and Saudi Aramco. Touching on the achievements, BusinessWeek said that in a year of loss, these companies are building market share, upending their industries and changing consumers’ lives.
Huawei achieved another accolade to be included among established industry leaders — Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent and Alvarion — earning its place among the “top vendors” in the WiMAX market in a year-end survey of worldwide telcos by Infonetics Research.
The company currently services more than one billion users through 35 of the world’s top telecom operators. Last year, Huawei’s revenue rose 36 percent to US$17 billion, on the back of signed contracts valued at US$23.3 billion for 2008. Three quarters of its sales in 2008 were overseas orders. While many companies globally are cutting down sales projections, Huawei reportedly is setting its sights to achieve 29 percent growth to US$30 billion in global sales.
Huawei Technologies wins 3G order in Costa Rica
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