New Huawei UK HQ In Reading Is Start Of £1.3bn Investment

Huawei is to move its UK headquarters to Green Park, Reading as part of the Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer’s ongoing commitment to investing in Britain.

The company will take up residence at the 140,000 square foot building in April 2013 and is the first part of its planned £1.3 billion investment programme in the UK.

“I am very pleased that Huawei has chosen to base its headquarters in my constituency in Reading and I look forward to welcoming them to the area,” said Alok Sharma, MP for Reading West. “Huawei is providing important investment to the UK and creating hundreds of new jobs for Reading and Green Park, demonstrating once again that Reading is an economic powerhouse in the south-east.”

Huawei UK Headquarters

Last month, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei met with Prime Minister David Cameron and pledged £650 million for its operations in the country and another £650 million in procurement over the next five years, meaning other British businesses will likely benefit.

Huawei has recently agreed a deal with EE to supply equipment for the operator’s new 4G nework and also runs a Cyber Security Evaluation Centre in the UK.

The company also has plans to increase its workforce to over 1,500 by 2017, up from the 800 it currently employs. Huawei also said it would set up a number of “global centres of technical and financial excellence”.

The announcement was designed to counter suggestions that Huawei is having trouble selling to the UK government because of its connections to China, but it has not been as successful elsewhere.

The Canadian government has invoked a “national security exception” that allows it to discriminate against companies deemed to be too risky to be involved with the construction of a government communications network, with Huawei believed to be the intended target.

The Intelligence Committee of the US House of Representatives has deemed that Huawei, along with ZTE, is a genuine security threat to the United States’ infrastructure and cannot be trusted to be free of “foreign state influence”. Huawei has denied these claims.

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