Huawei snags Optus deal
China's leading telecom vendor steals its partner-to-be’s thunder down under in a $79.4-million broadband deal.
February 22, 2005
BEIJING – Chinese telecom equipment vendor Huawei appears to have chalked up another international victory, clinching a $79.4-million bid to supply ADSL 2+ equipment to Australian carrier Optus.
According to reports in The Australian, Optus, owned by SingTel, plans to deploy a broadband network to compete with incumbent fixed-line carrier Telstra for a piece of a residential broadband market worth $1 billion.
The deal is significant not only because it represents Huawei’s largest contract in Australia to date, but because “it’s also Huawei’s largest-ever broadband contract,” notes Dave Carini of Norson Telecoms Consulting in Beijing. “It’s a significant step forward in Huawei’s battle to break into developed markets. Up until now, most of its international success has been in developing markets.”
Shenzhen-based Huawei has focused on routers, switching equipment including IP DSLAM, and other telecommunications gear. The vendor has proven highly competitive in Eastern Europe, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, where price-conscious carriers have responded to Huawei’s combination of low prices and short delivery times.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
According to The Australian report, Huawei’s chief competitor in the Optus bid was U.K.-based Marconi, with which Huawei signed an unrelated memorandum of understanding for a reselling arrangement in January. “The Optus deal has nothing to do with this [reselling] agreement,” said Skip MacAskill, vice president of strategic communications for Marconi. “The partnership hasn’t been finalized. Working groups are hammering out the final agreements and hopefully we’ll know what the final agreement is by the end of March.”
The agreement is expected to cover mutual distribution, with Marconi “reselling Huawei carrier-grade data communications products from routing and switching and switching line, and Huawei reselling [Marconi’s] next-generation access radio,” said Mr. MacAskill. “There may be some joint development agreements as well. Details will be available in March.”
Optus enjoys a significant second mover advantage: its ADSL 2+ network will provide much faster data speed than Telstra’s existing ADSL service, but will do so over copper wire laid out by Telstra during its former days as Australia’s monopoly carrier.
redherring.com |
