Telefónica Group president César Alierta and Huawei Technologies president Ren Zhengfei have officially inaugurated the Global Technical Assistance Centre (GTAC) in the Málaga Technology Park in Spain. The centre will provide technical support services to operators in all Spanish speaking countries.
The centre will eventually employ up to 50 professionals, most of them engineers specialising in areas such as wireless, broadband, data and core network technologies. With this opening, Huawei is taking an important new step in its growth strategy in Spain. Currently, Huawei has more than 300 professionals working in different offices in the country, 60% of whom are local employees.
"Global operators need to create long term partnerships with key industry suppliers and it is therefore important that our relationships are based not only on the technology we use but also on the high quality standards we require in order to fulfil our service commitment to our customers," explains Vicente San Miguel, Infrastructure and Information Technologies director at Telefónica. "Huawei's opening of this Spanish speaking centre to provide specialised technical assistance to our operations in Spain and Latin America is an important milestone in the cooperation between our two companies."
"The opening of the GTAC site is a decisive step for Huawei," explains Tang Xiaoming, president of the Telefónica global account at Huawei. "We have excellent growth prospects in the Spanish and Latin American markets and this centre will be a base for providing high level services for Telefónica and Spanish speaking operators. It will also help to attract qualified professionals to our organisation, to provide high-quality training programmes and to establish the basis for our future growth."
The presidents of Telefónica and Huawei have also signed today a cooperation agreement with the aim of creating an Innovation Centre. This innovation centre will focus on fixed and mobile broadband technologies, services, applications and software and core network solutions.