While Huawei and other Chinese infrastructure vendors battle to overcome government security fears in India and the US, the company is likely to be granted direct access to ministers in the UK.
The move, which was announced by Mark Prisk, the UK government's Business and Enterprise minister on a visit to Shanghai, is part of an initiative to allocate dedicated ministers to deal with companies that are substantial investors in the UK. Huawei has around 600 employees in the UK and Prisk said the company had also agreed to transfer technology to BT and Vodafone to assist them with entering into the Chinese market.
The government's plan is designed to allow companies to brief ministers on sensitive commercial issues prior to them becoming a problem-- such as Huawei is believed to have encountered with its involvement on BT's national broadband network.
Separately, Ericsson and NSN have reportedly both gained a greater share of the Wireless Packet Core (WPC) market in the second quarter of the year, while Huawei's share declined according to the Dell'Oro Group.
"As network operators begin to transition to LTE, the rapidly growing WPC equipment market is becoming more competitive and market share shifts are looming," said Greg Collins, VP at Dell'Oro Group. "Not only are there new entrants like Juniper and Tellabs, but operators have begun to opt for different vendors for their evolved packet core."
The market research firm said that the WPC market grew 19 per cent sequentially during the second quarter of 2010, in large part due to sustained growth in data and signalling traffic from mobile broadband services and smartphones. On a year-over-year basis, the market was substantially lower due to exceptional 3G network-related investments in China that peaked in the second quarter of 2009.
For more on this story:
- read The Telegraph & Cellular News
Related stories:
Huawei demos LTE in Portugal
Telenor picks Huawei for 4G upgrade, rejects Ericsson and NSN
Huawei sales stumbled in 2009, forecasting near flat revenues for 2010
Huawei outlines three-pronged plan to address security concerns