'Shanghaied' NSW premier announces MoU between Huawei and Finisar

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 20 July 2011 15:23

IT Industry - Deals

Huawei Australia has expanded its relationship with Finisar Australia - the Australian arm of global optical fibre transmission company Finisar - with a MoU covering several new types of wavelength selective switches (WSS), and is trialling Finisar technology that paves the way for 1Tbps per wavelength fibre in the future.

Huawei timed the signing and announcement of the MoU in Shanghai to co-incide with a visit to its facilities by NSW premier, Barry O'Farrell. It was made simultaneous with the announcement of a partnership with Macquarie University to establish a scholarship program for Electronic Engineering students.

Huawei stressed that the MoU "contains no binding agreement to purchase Finisar products," but said "the Finisar WSS products are expected to be key components in Huawei's next-generation fibre broadband networks." Separately, Huawei revealed that it was trialling Finisar's Australian-developed Flexgrid, technology - touted as a key enabler of DWDM networks in the future that will be able to carry 400Gbps and even 1Tbps per wavelength.

"Huawei is already deploying National Broadband Network-style fibre networks in the UK, Singapore, Malaysia, the UAE and Brunei, and this Australian technology is a key part of the innovation Huawei is delivering with fibre," said Huawei Australia CTO, Peter Rossi. "By entering into this MoU with Finisar, Huawei expects to include more Australian technology in the networks which are delivering high-speed broadband around the world.

O'Farrell said: "The agreements with Sydney's Macquarie University and with a Sydney arm of the Finisar Corporation are a vote of confidence in the future of the state's information and communications technology sector."

However, in kudos value the Huawei MoU came a poor second to a similar exercise last year when then NSW premier Kristina Keneally was a guest of Huawei in Shanghai. On that occasion, Huawei - and Keneally - announced Huawei's second contract with Finisar Australia saying it would create 20 jobs at the company's headquarters, in addition to the 75 created as a result of the first contract a year earlier. No mention of those contracts was made in today's announcement.

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