Huawei emphasizes local R&D with new Ottawa lab

It may be cheaper for Huawei to do R&D in China, but according to Huawei senior vice president Charlie Chen there is no substitute for having its engineers located right next to its customers, both current and potential. Today the Chinese vendor opened its second major R&D facility in North America, marking its growing might on this side of the Pacific and its particularly strong success in Canada.

The new Ottawa facility will initially employ 70 people, but Chen said it will grow to about 250 engineers and support staff in the next two to three years. Though they will support all of Huawei’s broad range of technologies, they will focus on the long-term evolution radio access, IP broadband and optical fields, reflecting their significance in North America. But Chen pointed out that Ottawa’s R&D capabilities won’t be limited to its initial staff. They will work in close collaboration with the main Plano research facility and several satellite labs Huawei has set up across the U.S., bringing the total number of North American engineers over 500. And if that weren’t enough, Huawei has its enormous primary R&D facility in Shenzhen, China, with which its North American labs will be in close contact.

“We’re leveraging international talent to enhance our research efforts, and there’s a lot of talent here in the U.S. and Canada,” Chen said. Huawei selected Ottawa because of the close proximity of its major customers, Telus (NYSE:TU) and Bell Mobility (NYSE:BCE), both of which selected Huawei to build their new high-speed packet access networks. But Ottawa also has international reputation as a telecom corridor, hosting major facilities from Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM), Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and was, of course, Nortel’s primary R&D hub. Chen said Huawei plans to draw heavily from the local technology pool.

The advantage of being close to customers isn’t just one of convenience, though, Chen said. By conducting product development and fine-tuning new technologies in the presence of its customers, vendors can enjoy major technological advantages. Researchers don’t live in a cocoon and can witness how their technology performs in the field in person. Huawei built its first HSPA+ networks for Bell and Telus, so it was critical that its engineers were on site to see how their first commercial products performed, Chen said.
“Our engineers don’t close the door and then do research,” Chen said. “They have frequent communications with the operators in Canada so we can mutually deliver the future technologies together.”