Leading telecommunication-solution provider ZTE Corporation announced on Thursday that it had partnered with the renowned Javeriana University of Colombia for the building of a new telecoms laboratory. The company also announced that it had made investments of $4 million for the construction of the new lab.

According to ZTE, the new facility is aimed at offering training for students from the Electronics Department of the Javeriana University, as well as for ZTE´s customers around Latin America. Moreover, it has been also build for promoting the company's products, mainly the wire-line infrastructure ones, including NGN, Transmission (such as SDH, DWDM, micro-wave) and net access (MSAG, DSLAM).

The new telecoms laboratory was expected to start functioning at the beginning of the next year, the company announced. Both ZTE and the Javeriana University expect to be able to offer “access to state of the art telecommunication equipment and training courses” to a number of around 500 customers each year through the new facility.

“With our new lab we are demonstrating our heritage and core understanding of Latin America carriers and their technology requirements,” Mr. Su Jian, ZTE Columbia president, said. “We will have a continuous investment plan and look forward to train more telecom talent locally and help carriers deepen their understanding of the company.”

ZTE also stated that the new partnership showed its commitment towards investing in training a larger number of telecommunication talents of the local society, especially since it had been established with one of the oldest and well-recognized, accredited Universities in Colombia. The new lab, along with additional training facilities in Brazil, should offer access to telecoms technologies to a wide number of customers, the company added.

“For Javeriana University this partnership consolidates its cooperation process with high tech industrial partners and provides a hands-on scenario for students and faculty that will enable the development of international telecommunication research activities, promoting also student mobility from well-recognized Chinese Universities,” the company added.