Huawei to invest US$100 million in Chile’s internet infrastructure

Contxto – Chinese tech giant, Huawei, intends to invest over US$100 million in Chile. According to the company, everything is in motion to develop cloud storage infrastructure in the South American tech hub in the next three to five years.

In Summary

Following Google’s recent news of the installation of an optical fiber cable from Los Angeles, California to Valparaiso, Chile, now Huawei also wants to join the party.

According to Huawei Chile’s CEO, David Dou Yong, the company hopes to develop a brand new infrastructure. The goal is to turn the country into “Latin America’s heart” in terms of technological capacity.

The executive held a meeting with Huawei’s CEO, Lian Huang, Chile’s General Director, Marcelo Pinto, and Chilean President, Sebastián Piñera, during a tour across China. During this time, the company announced its ambitious initiative called Huawei Cloud.

“In the next three to five years, we’ll invest more than US$100 million,” said Yong. “We’ll build Chile’s infrastructure to support this cloud service. Not only for Chile but for neighboring countries as well.”

In-Depth

According to a company statement, Huawei stated that President Piñera is fully supportive of this endeavor.

“He expressed Chile’s interest in the development of 5G, the deployment of transpacific submarine fiber optic cables, and the best practices in cybersecurity and data protection,” said the Huawei correspondence.

To achieve these goals, the holding company will connect outlying Chilean cities to the Santiago metropolitan area. Huawei will also install a submarine optical fiber cable connecting Chile and China.

“I hope that Chile is the main country of the South American region to launch this,” said Yong to El Mercurio, seeming particularly impressed with Chile’s economic potential.

“It has a very transparent policy and regulation, so we want to build Huawei Chile as a reference for South America and for the world. For us, Chile is a very interesting market.”

With this initiative, Chile will be responsible for physically storing and protecting the cloud’s data.

Huawei Chile currently has 120 employees, of which 70 percent are Chilean. At the same time, it will continue to employ national talent.

-VC