NEC will double its current commitment to third generation research and development investment in Australia, injecting AU$70 million over three years into its Melbourne-based R&D centre and increasing staff numbers by 150 over the same period.
"We're almost doubling the activity of R&D spend," NEC Australia's executive director, Brendan McManus, told ZDNet, " and we could well find the need to go overseas [to recruit]," he added.
The AU$70 million commitment will allow NEC Australia to apply its research to twice as much 3G equipment area as it could previously, Derek Dawkins, NEC Australia's department manager, communications technology, said.
Dawkins agreed, however, that NEC's local operations would find it difficult to recruit all 150 engineers from Australia alone.
NEC Australia will strive to employ 50 new engineers, including software and hardware developers from high architecture levels right down to software coding and hardware designers, over the next 12 months.
However, "limitations in the Australian market for this type of engineer" might make this a tight call, Dawkins said.
Competition from companies in parallel fields will see NEC pillage a number of engineers from countries such as Hong Kong, Malaysia and India to fill the gap.
"Over 12 months, getting 50 engineers will be a hard ask," Dawkins said, "we will have to work hard on publicity to get them."
With a graduate engineer program, NEC Australian toured Victorian universities this year and said it will be picking up a growing number of recruits direct from university. The graduate engineer program will expand nationally next year.
NEC Australia began with an R&D budget of just AU$7 million in 1990 and after being selected seven years ago to participate in an Australian government development program has invested about AU$35 million into research and development.
McManus said it has taken NEC Australia those seven years to get to the stage from having no credibility as a research centre to where its Japanese parent is basing substantial research projects in Australia.
The additional funding "will allow us to double the amount of influence NEC Australia has on NEC's world-wide efforts," Dawkins said.
