TelOne partners Huawei

Published: 04 December 2017

State-Owned telecommunications company, TelOne, has partnered with a leading global information and communications technology solutions provider, Huawei, to provide training to engineering students.

TelOne managing director Chipo Mtasa said the new partnership culminated as a result of radical changes in business brought about by developments in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector.

"We have been working quietly behind the scenes to ensure that we come up with more contemporary technology training programmes. We have therefore managed to get into a relationship with Huawei which is culminating in the launch of 7 new diploma programmes, all of them Huawei certified," she said at a graduation ceremony last week.

The parastatal - through its TelOne Centre for Learning - also introduced an additional 4 HEXCO certification to its curriculum.

"We are therefore inviting players in the telecommunications sector specifically and business broadly to explore our new offering. We are confident that the courses are relevant to add to the skills required to support your networks and digital business solutions. We will continue to be agile and to respond to the need of the new technology that keeps coming onto our door step," she added.

ICT ministry permanent secretary Sam Kundishora, who was guest of honour at the graduation ceremony were more than 160 telecommunication engineering students were conferred with diplomas, said the TelOne-Huawei partnership was a huge development for Zimbabwe.

"Huawei has already made in-roads in providing the necessary technical support…Beyond selling technology to us as a country, they have been able to transfer critical skills required to maintain these new systems," he said.

He further indicated that today's businesses are investing a lot of money in order to adopt online and remote models so that they can reach their clients, facilitate collaboration among employees and monitor their businesses in real time.

"It is this reality that makes the telecommunication qualification that the graduands are earning today a critical qualification for the future. I would like to therefore urge all those graduating to remain resolute in your hard work and continue to explore ways of adding value to the telecommunications space in our country," Kundishora added.

The graduating students were equipped with the skills to design, install and maintain ICT infrastructure, develop applications and software solutions, analyse data to pick out information useful for business decisions as well as marketing techniques.

TelOne Centre for Learning has long been involved in the training of telecommunications technicians since the 1950s. In those early years, the institution trained solely for the holding company, the then PTC.

However, as times and business paradigms changed, the training college started training for the broader market in Zimbabwe and the Sadc region.

The institution's product lines have increased over the years to include above the traditional telecommunications technician training, a variety of ICT short courses, notable among them the Cisco range of courses, as well as business soft skills.
- dailynews