As part of Vodafone’s plan to improve mobile coverage and download speeds in Australia, the company has brought in Huawei.

The scale of the upgrade project will see Huawei recruit 300 new technical staff in Australia, as well as 200 additional subcontractors, more than doubling Huawei’s current number of staff in Australia.

“We’re installing the latest technology from the company that we believe is the best network hardware and software vendor in the world to deliver a better mobile experience to our customers,” said Nigel Dews, CEO at Vodafone.

The work will start immediately and customers should start to see and experience real improvements in the network added Dews.

Vodafone has prioritised its national 2G and 3G radio access network (RAN) replacement project at all base stations throughout Australia. Engineers are targeting the most congested and highest demand sites first.

The firm expects to replace all radio equipment at around 8000 sites over the next 18 months.

Around 5800 existing 2G and 3G base station sites will be replaced with Huawei’s SingleRAN solution, which is capable of delivering 2G, 3G and, later, 4G or Long Term Evolution (LTE) from a single base station site.

Vodafone will also install the new Huawei network equipment at more than 2200 new sites that it will bring into its network over the next 18 months.

All customers’ mobile phones and mobile broadband devices will remain compatible.