Huawei: China's Nortel

The telecom equipment market has been dominated by Nortel & Lucent, and to a smaller degree Alcatel, Erricson, and Nokia. These are the companies that build the core elements of the network, the switches that make your call and bill your call.
Cisco entered this market, but never really made into the big leagues of high capacity switching (more than 10,000 calls at once).

Enter Huawei. A Chinese equipment maker that has been delivering high capacity switching equipment to markets in the Middle East, Africa, and is beginning to encroach on the turf of the big players in Europe & America. They do it cheaper, and have been closing the gap on reliability. More of the big telecom's are considering Huawei as an option, and this scares Nortel & Lucent.

February 1st Nortel & Huawei established a joint venture to address the broadband access market. The two companies have also entered into a supply agreement that allows Nortel to immediately begin engaging customers with Huawei’s current industry-leading broadband access portfolio.

Joint development of products has already begun, with availability expected for all markets by the third quarter of 2006.

The joint venture will be focused on product enhancements for Huawei’s current broadband access portfolio and the development of a new ultra broadband product portfolio. This portfolio will be sold exclusively to Huawei and Nortel as channel providers.

“We believe the cooperation with Nortel, a leader in the telecommunications industry, will enable us to create greater value for our customers.” expressed Yafang Sun, chairwoman of Huawei.

For now, Huawei needs the credibility that Nortel offers. If you can't beat them, join them!