Huawei opens Brazil innovation center

Chinese telecoms and IT equipment manufacturer Huawei opened a customer solutions and innovation center (CSIC) in São Paulo this Thursday, designed to showcase solutions and to allow telecoms carriers and enterprises to test applications in real-time.

At the São Paulo center, customers will be able to test the implementation of new applications for their business lines before launching new services commercially, Huawei officials said at the launch.

The CSIC is located at Huawei's São Paulo headquarters. It features technologies for big data, cloud computing, NFV, SDN, 4K video and voice over LTE (VoLTE), among others.

Currently, Huawei runs seven CSICs worldwide. BNamericas was told that new ones are expected for the coming year, and Latin America is on the map too.

TRAINING CENTER, OPERATORS

Parallel to the CSIC, Huawei also opened a training center for development of ICT talent, taking a smaller structure to São Paulo than has been operating since 2005 at the company's production hub in the city of Campinas, São Paulo state.

Huawei has 45 such centers worldwide and four in Latin America; in Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela, in addition to Brazil.

The investment figures were not disclosed.

Both the CSIC and the training center build on a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between Brazil and Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang during Keqiang's state visit to the country last May, Huawei said.

On that occasion, Brazilian carriers Vivo and TIMalso signed technology deals with Huawei. Tito Ocampos, R&D director at Huawei Brazil, told BNamericas that the partnership with Vivo is slightly more advanced than the one with TIM.

The deal with TIM involves the development of technologies for mobile broadband, cloud computing and network function virtualization (NFV), as well as setting up of a lab in Rio de Janeiro. According to Ocampos, Huawei and TIM are at the planning stage and are currently narrowing down which technologies will be targeted at the center and to assess costs. NFV and LTE in 450MHz should be included in the initial focus.