Yesterday’s announcement that Huawei had won a multi-million dollar contract to supply fibre technology for the Canterbury portion of the UFB build is yet another piece of good news for the Chinese telco equipment juggernaut.
Huawei has taken the local telecommunications market by storm over the past few years. It has won and then renewed infrastructure build contracts with 2degrees, been picked for the Rural Broadband Initiative, and been chosen by the central North Island’s UFB builder, Ultrafast Fibre.
The company has been linked to plans for a new Trans-Tasman fibre cable and has also been targeting the local consumer handset market with innovations including the first Te Reo Maori smartphone.
With all this activity, it’s no surprise Huawei New Zealand CEO Arthur Zhang has slipped into a top 20 spot on TechDay’s annual list of the most influential people in telecommunications.
Huawei isn’t stopping there, however. It has another significant contract firmly in its sights: a UFB technology deal with Chorus, along the lines of the contracts it has already picked up with Canterbury’s Enable Services and the central region’s Ultrafast Fibre.
Chorus is responsible for building the lion’s share – approximately 70% – of the entire national UFB network, so its "layer 2” equipment deal (for the provision of the electronics to run the network) is the big one.
Yesterday Chorus said it had not yet put the layer 2 contract out for tender. When it does – sometime over the next few months – Huawei will face stiff competition from rival vendors, particularly Alcatel-Lucent which has a strong long-term relationship with Chorus.
Commenting on the Enable deal yesterday, Zhang seemed to make it pretty clear Huawei already had its eyes on the Chorus prize when he said: "We are very committed to developing our business in New Zealand and playing a significant role in this very important fibre infrastructure project.”
He has good reason to feel relatively confident going into the Chorus tender process, given the RBI win Huawei has already notched up with the company.
The Chorus UFB deal will largely come down to price, and that’s an area where Huawei has a strong advantage over competing vendors.
If the company does pick up the lucrative Chorus contract, and if some of its other ventures continue to blossom, Zhang looks set to move even further up our list of influencers by the end of the year.
Image: Huawei NZ CEO Arthur Zhang.