Zou Yongqian, managing director of Huawei Technologies (Thailand), said late last week that the centre would serve customers, who need new services and high-tech equipment, in Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Burma, and Thailand. But he declined to specify the cost of setting up the centre.

Huawei's other global R&D centres are located in India, US, Sweden, Russia, besides in many cities of China. It has been injecting a minimum of 10 per cent of annual revenue into R&D.

Last year, Huawei set up a training centre in Thailand to provide knowledge training programmes about its equipment to its customers, including TOT, CAT Telecom, Advanced Info Service, Triple T, and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand.

Thailand has the potential in terms of new technology adoption, including the 3G broadband wireless technology, Yongqian added.

However, Huawei Thailand fell short of its revenue target last year by 50 per cent, due to delays in several government projects, coupled with the change in government, he said, but declined to give more details.

Huawei made its debut in Thailand many years ago with AIS as its first customer. AIS is the telecom flagship of Shin Corp founded by the family of the ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Last year, Huawei's global revenue stood at US$11 billion [Bt394 billion), of which $1.8 billion were contributed by the Asia Pacific market.

"We are positive this year and focusing on the long-term revenue in Thailand," Yongqian added.

In the last two weeks, Huawei has bagged two deals out of three in CAT's project to wire the whole country with a Bt1.88-billion fibre-optic network in two years.

Huawei bagged the deal to install the optical-fibre network in the Northeast by quoting the lowest price of Bt774 million, and also the deal to install the optical-fibre network in the western, central and northern regions by quoting Bt484.5 million.

"The reason we can quote the low price in many bids is because we've our own R&D and we can offer comprehensive solutions, which keep our competitive edge," Yongqian said.

One of the biggest projects in Thailand for the company was to supply a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 1-x broadband cellular network to CAT worth Bt7.199 billion. The network was completely installed this month.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation