Huawei prices RMIT training sponsorship

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 16 December 2010 09:30

IT Industry - Development

Huawei Australia says it will establish a training laboratory worth $250,000 at RMIT to fulfil its commitment under a training partnership announced in July.

Huawei Australia announced in July that it had teamed up with RMIT University to deliver training in information and communications technologies, saying: "The partnership will see classrooms equipped with the latest Huawei equipment and devices, as well as permanent Huawei staff on hand to assist in teaching students about the latest technology breakthroughs direct from Huawei's global research and development (R&D) centres."

Huawei said at the time that it expected 500 students in Victoria to be trained over the next three years and said it was in discussions with a number of other Australian Universities to provide similar training, bringing the total number to 1,000 - 2,000 nationally over this period. It said that training would be provided on a variety of new technologies including long term evolution (LTE) cellular, gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) and broadband applications.

Huawei put no value on its contribution in the July announcement but said today that it would "contribute $250,000 towards the establishment of the lab, which will be fitted out with Huawei's latest technology to be used in training students."

It has also upped the trainee output estimates from 500 over three years to 2,000 over the next five years saying the first courses should start in 2011 and that: "completion of each course will result in students holding a qualification to work with Huawei equipment."

A Huawei spokesman told ExchangeDaily in July: "The long-term plan is for Huawei courses to be integrated into RMIT degrees, but this will take some time because of the regulations placed on formal degrees."

The Huawei RMIT partnership was the third announced in July between a global telecoms vendor and an Australian university. The University of NSW introduced a new post-graduate course in network systems architecture developed in conjunction with Cisco and designed to equip students for roles in the National Broadband Network and cloud computing; and Alcatel-Lucent announced plans to open a new campus within the University of Technology Sydney that would offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses shaped by Alcatel-Lucent training materials, with elements delivered in conjunction with Alcatel-Lucent staff.