O2 Germany Forms Partnership with Huawei to Expand its Networks

O2 Germany has chosen Huawei Technologies as one of its partners for the expansion of the O2 mobile network in Germany. The agreement includes both the replacement of existing base stations and the planned construction of more than 8,000 base stations by Huawei for GSM and UMTS.

Expansion steps taken by Huawei are to be completed by the end of 2009.

At the same time, the UMTS coverage will be expanded in Germany to 60 percent. In addition, the company will expand the HSDPA network and implement HSUPA based on Huawei's technological solutions within the scope of the proposed sub-project.

"The cooperation with O2 in Germany marks a milestone for Huawei, with our abundant experience on 3G project delivery in Europe, we have confidence to build a top class mobile network", says Wei Peng, Managing Director of Huawei Technologies in Germany. "We are pleased that O2 has demonstrated strong trust in our company, Huawei's lead-ing GSM/UMTE/LTE unified solution will ensure O2 to achieve smooth evolution and in-vestment protection.

"In addition to the expansion of the network to almost 100 percent, our goal is the pro-vision of the most state-of-the-art network infrastructure for mobile voice and data communications by 2009", says Andrea Folgueiras, CTO for O2 Germany. "Huawei is the ideal partner to meet our requirements." Huawei Technology is one of the most state-of-the-art. Important for O2 mainly is the solution of Huawei to integrate UMTS- and GSM Technology into a base station as well as an easy transformation of one existing GSM base station to UMTS.

The comprehensive expansion of the network to be driven, among others, by Huawei is a key component of the corporate strategy of O2 Germany.

Posted to the site on 22nd April 2008