Huawei has promised to continue investing in Europe, outlining its commitment to work closely with local partners in order to build out the region’s digital infrastructure.
The Chinese is in the middle £1.3 billion investment programme in the UK alone but there are concerns that Brexit could impact R&D in the UK, a fear outlined by BT CEO Gavin Patterson only this week.
However Huawei pledged to support European firms’ digital transformation initiatives by working with telecom operators and to tackle skills shortages that could impact innovation levels.
Huawei Rotating CEO Ken Hu made the commitment during his keynote speech at the Huawei Innovation Day, expanding on Huawei’s European history which goes back 17 years: “In this time we have grown together and forged lasting partnerships. We are in Europe for Europe, working hard to create value for our customers and help the region go digital. As Europe goes digital, our contribution takes several different forms.
“The first is providing competitive technology and products that are the result of our long-term investment in basic research. The second is working closely with partners all across the industry landscape to develop targeted solutions for European customers. And our third contribution is promoting an open digital ecosystem.”
As part of this contribution, Huawei has partnered with the University of Edinburgh to form a Joint Lab for Distributed Data Management and Processing for the development of data science technologies.
The Shenzhen-based firm already has a strong presence in Europe, with 18 research and development facilities in eight European countries. It will also build OpenLabs in London and Paris this year to supplement the centre already open in Munich.
“We want Europe to have the best and leading digital infrastructure for the next five to ten years,” added Vincent Pang, President of Western European Region, Huawei. “One the infrastructure side, Europe is not in a leading position at the moment, particularly on coverage. We want to cooperate with all our partners to build ecosystems for digital transformation.
“We want to make the innovation here in Europe, but with a global network to bring the innovations and their benefits to the rest of the world.”
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