Huawei European Research Institute To Spearhead 5G Development

Huawei is to open a ‘European Research Institution (ERI)’ in Belgium in order to manage its research and development (R&D) operations across the continent, with a particular emphasis on the development of 5G technologies.

The ERI will be located in Leuven, due to the city’s proximity to many European Union (EU) institutions in Brussels, and is intended to foster closer collaboration with Huawei’s academic and industry partners as well as the EU itself, particularly the Digital Agenda.

Huawei current employees more than 1,200 employees at 18 European R&D facilities located in eight countries, including Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the UK.

Huawei 5G R&D

“Europe enjoys a favourable industrial environment, and is the global competence centre for Huawei,” said rotating CEO Guo Ping. “The ERI will manage Huawei’s European research and innovation activities, and strengthen our cooperation with European industry and academia.

“Huawei is working with its partners to achieve a smooth transition towards ‘Europe 4.0’ – the digitised European Union of the future in which everyone and everything will be connected. Our aim is to help Europe achieve smart growth and build a better connected Europe.”

The Chinese manufacturer is currently involved in the EU’s METIS and 5G-PPP research projects and is helping to build test beds at the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) and in Munich – initiatives it helps will accelerate the adoption of next generation mobile networks.

Huawei is investing £374 million towards 5G research and is currently working on an upgrade to existing networks called ‘4.5G’ which could eventually offer up to 100,000 connections per cell -100 times that of LTE – and speeds in excess of 1Gbps.

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