Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) has recruited Huawei to upgrade equipment in 8000 base stations which will assist the telco in a future 4G LTE rollout.
VHA earlier announced it was undergoing a network upgrade valued at around $1 billion in order to appease customers that have been unhappy with the telco’s service performance
Following in the footsteps of competitor, Telstra, the telco also flagged plans to move its 3G network to 4G LTE.
To pave the way for LTE, VHA will replace all 2G and 3G equipment at its base stations. It has prioritised national 2G and 3G radio access network (RAN) with high demand sites being treated to an upgrade first.
VHA is installing Chinese vendor, Huawei’s SingleRAN product to 5800 of its existing 2G and 3G base station sites.
More than 2200 new base station sites will also receive Huawei equipment over the next 18 months.
The teloc’s radio network controller (RNC) equipment in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth will be replaced by Huawei technology.
VHA and Huawei are working together to eventually bring the telco’s network theoretical download speeds to 150Mbps through LTE. The pair ran LTE tests in Newcastle last year and achieved speeds of up to 74.3Mbps under test conditions.
The deal will result in Huawei recruiting 300 technical staff and 200 subcontractors.
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