TORONTO — More than 300 guests Thursday night helped Huawei to celebrate the company’s 10 years of Canadian operations during its fifth Canadian Partner Convention, held in Toronto.
Given the questions and negative news surrounding Huawei’s global operations lately, the company no doubt welcomed the convention guests who attended from its 100-plus partners, including carriers, channel partners, suppliers, universities, governments and local chambers of commerce.
According to a news release issued Friday afternoon, Huawei executives took the opportunity at the convention to express gratitude to all of the partners and suppliers who have helped grow the company’s Canadian operations over the past 10 years.
“Without your partnership and support, Huawei Canada’s success would not have been possible,” Eric Li, president of Huawei Technologies Canada, said in the news release. “We look forward to continuing, and expanding, our commitment to the Canadian market over the next decade.”
The convention’s theme, “Grow with Canada in a New Decade”, looked toward the future while highlighting some of Huawei’s key successes over the past 10 years in Canada, notably its significant R&D investments.
Huawei also announced it is making an unprecedented commitment to partners in the research and academic communities.
“Not only are we adding 200 new, high-paying R&D jobs and expanding our R&D investments in 2019 by 15%,” said Christian Chau, president of R&D for Huawei Canada,” But we are also changing our R&D investment practices to ensure all intellectual property (IP) generated in collaboration with Canadian institutions remains in the country.”
According to Huawei, this change will result in more equitable IP sharing, helping to support and encourage the next generation of researchers to pursue technological advancements that will improve the world, and enhance connectivity for all.
Among the partnership successes celebrated during the convention were Huawei’s joint efforts with partners to enhance Canadian connectivity, specifically through Huawei’s support of telecom operators connecting rural and remote areas, including Indigenous communities.
Huawei also highlighted its work over the past five years with Telus, where Huawei’s networks have had zero accidents, incidents or outages and more than 100 network upgrades, the company said. Huawei also took the opportunity to speak about its contribution of more than $2.7 million to 100-plus different causes and research in Canada.
