Huawei eyes Adelaide office for VHA work

Project or permanent?

Huawei has announced plans to set up an Adelaide office to run part of Vodafone Hutchison Australia's network modernisation project.

A spokesman for the vendor told iTnews that the office was expected to house "up to 50" Huawei staff, and an undisclosed number of additional personnel from two subcontractors the vendor planned to use in South Australia.

He could not confirm how many Huawei staff would be employed at the office from day one or how many would remain after the VHA project ended in around 18 months.

The spokesman indicated Huawei wanted the office to be "permanent... [but] it remains to be seen how many new contracts" the vendor could win between now and the end of the VHA replacement project.

Huawei won the landmark project in February, which will see VHA replace base station equipment at all 5,800 existing 2G and 3G sites with Huawei gear.

South Australia had about 450 of those sites.

Huawei already employs some 400 staff in Sydney and a further 50 in Melbourne. A spokesman for the vendor was unable to confirm if it would also open an office in other capitals such as Brisbane to complete the VHA project.

Vodafone's state manager for South Australia Steve Hobson said in a statement that "the southern suburbs of Adelaide will play a key role in [VHA's] forthcoming NBN trials.

"We already employ around 50 people at our Adelaide office and Huawei's new office will form an important strategic headquarters for our network upgrade throughout South Australia, which is now underway," Hobson said.

VHA said in late February that it wanted to trial NBN services, both to offload traffic from the company's mobile network and to potentially offer fixed-line services.