Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

HOME

Essex-China JV targets marine billions

Written by Lautaro Vargas

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Ping Guo, CSO of Huawei and Gabriel Ruhan, CEO of Global Marine Systems (seated) with Ian Douglas (centre) Marine expertise from Essex that stretches back 150 years is at the core of a major shake up of a thriving $2 billion industry which provides vital links to the world’s burgeoning telecoms network, enabling highly advanced communications capabilities on a global scale. Global Marine Systems is aiming to capture a 30 per cent market share and claim second spot as the world’s leading supplier of end-to-end submarine network equipment in just three years through a joint venture with global optical networking powerhouse, Huawei Technologies. The two companies have installed the senior management team that will underpin the initial growth of the JV company, Huawei Submarine Networks Co, eventually taking it to the position of world leader in a sector estimated to be worth up to $3 billion by 2012. Growth in the sector is being driven by the global switch to all-IP networks, while massive global growth in bandwidth requirements for broadband multimedia applications and high speed internet are driving resurgence in telecommunications build out in certain geographic regions. Led by former director of Global Marine Asia Pacific, Ian Douglas, the venture’s success will depend on its ability to combine the advanced optical expertise and extensive global sales channels of Huawei with the market-leading submarine engineering of Global Marine. “Huawei’s sales platform gives us a huge amount of scale from day one of the venture, while Global Marine has 30 per cent of the world cable ship fleet, which gives us a great position,” said Douglas. “We intend to be the world number two within three years, taking 20 to 30 per cent of a $2-3 billion market.” A major element of the JV’s success will be its ability to innovate – something Douglas believes the industry’s current leaders have recently failed to do adequately – and to win upgrade contracts. Huawei’s massive R & D operation and its contacts with telcos that lie outside of Global’s current customer base will go a way to achieving this. “The market is currently dominated by two suppliers who have around 80 per cent of the market,” said Douglas. “When you have two incumbent companies they can get very settled and there has not really been a great deal of drive to innovate. “The original path for companies looking to upgrade is to go back to the original supplier; we want them to increasingly come to us to upgrade. Hibernia have and we will soon be announcing others that have. “We believe our approach to submarine telecommunication and turnkey system installation gives customers a real choice – something not seen in submarine telecoms for a long time.” While the majority of Huawei Submarine workers will be based at a dedicated site in Tianjin, some will operate from Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen – which employs 16,000 people – and at the Beijing R & D facility. The venture will also allow Global Marine Systems to refocus on its cable work and the company will be subcontracted by Huawei Submarine to carry out all the subsea installation and maintenance work. Global Marine operates the world’s largest fleet of cable ships and subsea vehicles; it is a market leader in marine cable installation and maintenance for telecoms, as well as scientific research, oil, gas, utilities and the renewable energy sector. It has installed more undersea fibre optic cables than any other operator. More than half the world’s buried fibre-optic cables have been installed by Global Marine. Set as favorite Bookmark Email This Hits: 841 Trackback(0) TrackBack URI for this entry Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Show/Hide comments Write comment Show/Hide comment form This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.

 

< Prev		Next >