Zain Kuwait and Huawei today announced plans to launch a first-of-its-kind joint innovation centre, which will serve as a research hub for the advancement of long-term evolution (LTE) technologies for Zain’s mobile customers in Kuwait and across the region.
The new centre will ultimately support Zain in enhancing its service offerings while realising additional revenue streams through the advancement of its LTE network capabilities.
Both Zain and Huawei will be investing capital in the construction of the centre with the two companies also bringing together a team of global experts, engineers and other human resources to lead the centre’s work.
The two companies signed an MoU outlining their ambitions for the joint innovation centre during a ceremony at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
In attendance at the signing ceremony was Omar Al Omar, CEO, and Hani EL-Kukhun, COO, and Shafeeq Omar, CCO, Zain Kuwait, as well as Shi Yaohong, President, Huawei ME, Pan En, GM, Huawei Kuwait, and Mohamad Sharara, Head of Zain Key Account, Huawei.
“We are very pleased to have completed the signing of this agreement,” Omar said. “Zain prides itself for being the only telecommunications company in Kuwait that offers its customers various telecommunication solutions while providing the best mobile services experience in town.
“We are aware that the competition for quality Internet services is increasing and by partnering with a leading global ICT solutions provider such as Huawei to launch the first Joint Innovation Center we are reassuring our utmost concern in offering latest technologies in Kuwait.
“The centre aims at enhancing the overall LTE experience throughout Zain’s Middle East networks, allowing customers to browse the Internet through their smartphones faster than before. Zain looks very positively on collaborations with successful outcome like Huawei and plans to pursue further partnerships to ensure that its customers receive the best services.”
Amongst the goals for the new joint innovation centre will be the testing of new LTE-compatible services and applications, as well as the development of sophisticated processes that can be used to measure subscribers’ quality of service and perform more robust customer-experience analysis.
To date Huawei has launched more than 28 joint innovation centres worldwide in addition to 16 global research and development (R&D) centres.
Huawei annually invests on average over 10% of its total annual sales revenues into R&D, with approximately 70,000 of its more than 150,000 employees worldwide currently engaged in R&D activities.
“As a provider of the fastest mobile broadband services to customers across Kuwait, Zain has succeeded in evolving various generations of world-class technologies in order to provide its customers today with an expansive coverage network and high-speed LTE access,” Yaohong said during the MoU signing ceremony.
“Huawei is honoured to have forged a long-term strategic partnership with Zain in the field of mobile broadband – both in Kuwait and across the Middle East region. Based on a mutual dedication to addressing customer needs, we are confident that this latest joint innovation centre will help bring the world’s most advanced telecom services and applications to more people anytime, anywhere.”
Zain had initially partnered with Huawei in launching LTE services in Kuwait under the banner “Wiyana Connect 4G LTE” in November 2012. Zain and Huawei expanded their LTE partnership after the successful deployment of earlier 2G & 3G networks in the country.
