Article content continued

While the company missed out on buying a division of Nortel to help speed its research and development plans in Ottawa, it’s been particularly successful in snapping up its former employees in the region and focusing those employees on creating cutting edge wireless technologies which it then sells around the world. As of 2012 the company became the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, leapfrogging Ericsson. It employs more than 170,000 people globally and posted revenues of $60.1 billion U.S. in 2015.

Tuesday’s announcement to expand its footprint in Ontario revises an earlier set of plans released by the company in 2014. The company had initially planned to hire 320 new employees by 2019. It has already filled around 130 of those positions. However, market pressure and the amount of telecom talent available in the province has pushed the company to speed up its timelines and add to its employee count in the province.

“We’ve accelerated our hiring. We are staffing up at a much faster rate than we had initially planned,” said Scott Bradley, vice-president of corporate and government affairs for Huawei.

Bradley said between 55 per cent and 65 per cent of Huawei’s Canadian employees will be in Ottawa.

The company’s announcement on Tuesday was supported by a $16 million investment by the Ontario government through the province’s 10-year, $2.5 billion Jobs and Prosperity Fund.