Chapter 15 The Ups and Downs of Conquering Europa

Europe is short for Europa, and the word "Europa" means "the place where the sun sets" or "the land of the west".Europa is a desirable land with beautiful scenery and pleasant climate. This land has bred a highly developed civilization. Europe in the 19th century was an era of "needing giants and producing giants", where the capitalist system was the most developed and the competition was the most intense. The long-term development of capitalism has accumulated rich experience and formed a strict market access system.If a large enterprise wants to become a real large enterprise, it must first enter the "melting pot" of the European market and accept its harsh test.

Huawei, a company that has just risen, has yet to find its name on the international stage. Before 2001, Huawei was still very unfamiliar with Europe. How could it talk about doing business?In order to knock on the door of Europe, Huawei has exhausted its efforts and tasted the ups and downs of the world. During World War II, the British and American troops landed in Normandy, France, concentrated their forces to repel the Nazi attack, and won the anti-fascist war.Half a century later, Ren Zhengfei landed in France with his "wolf team" and started the journey of "European adventure".

In February 2001, the French telecom operator LDCOM (later NEUF) planned to build a backbone optical transmission network throughout France.LDCOM, which was established not long ago, only provided the basic network wholesale business of optical fiber for telecom operators at first, and then began to provide services for enterprises and individual users. In 1996, the United States promulgated the "Telecommunication Reform Act", which first liberalized the telecom operation market.In just a few years, European countries have gradually liberalized their telecommunications markets.With the impact of new technologies such as IP, some old-fashioned telecom operators are heavily burdened, unable to adapt to the development of new technologies, and have fallen into trouble one after another.

Some emerging small and medium-sized operators have relatively light burdens. They adopt advanced technologies, respond quickly to customers in some market segments, and stand out quickly. This is how NEUF started. Its plan is: users only need to pay 30 euros per month to enjoy the "trinity" value-added service of 160 digital channels of TV programs, Internet access services and traditional telephone voice services . In order to build this new transmission network, NEUF has drawn up a list of suppliers.There was no Huawei at the beginning, because Huawei was still unknown at that time.Later, a local French agent with a close relationship with NEUF called NEUF CEO Michel Paulin and tried his best to recommend Huawei, hoping to give Huawei a chance to compete.

Michel Paulin said: "We were not sure about Huawei at the beginning. Only because of the strong recommendation of this agent, we agreed to let this Chinese company that we had never heard of have a try." Huawei also started Attractive conditions have been offered - NEUF will build the initial network of Lyon and other two cities for NEUF at a very favorable price and be responsible for operating it for 3 months, and then hand it over to NEUF for evaluation. In less than 3 months, Huawei built the network in two cities. This speed is very suitable for NEUF's appetite, and the evaluation results are also very satisfactory. "Lu Yao knows horsepower, and time sees people's hearts."Huawei has gradually won NEUF's optical network transmission contracts throughout France.

"This saved us at least 10% of the investment," commented Michel Paulin, "and we got the speed we wanted. You know, a few years ago all the markets were French Telecom, and now we It has become its biggest competitor. Why? It is nothing more than that we are faster and more adventurous; of course, our price is also cheaper than France Telecom." Michel Paulin winked her eyes humorously, " Because we use Chinese equipment." NEUF is an emerging operator, all equipment and systems are based on IP.Their product certification is not very cumbersome. Generally, it only takes four to five months for the certification of ADSL access equipment, and two to three months for data communication products. At the beginning of March 2003, the two signed a DWDM national trunk line transmission network contract.Now, Huawei, Alcatel, Cisco and other companies have entered the list of six major suppliers of NEUF, and firmly occupy the first position.

"If Huawei wants to do business in Europe, which is heavily hierarchical, it must first find suitable agents and partners, and only through agents can it be possible to meet operators." Wang Guanzhu, a Huawei employee who explores the European market, said, "For For Huawei, which meets with operators every day in China, this indirect sales method is very unaccustomed. However, there is no way around it. In Europe, Huawei must learn to 'leverage strength'." Initially, Huawei was looking for agents in France, starting with Alstom.This French system integrator often undertakes some telecommunications integration projects.As a general contractor, it needs to find some cost-effective equipment suppliers for cooperation.Huawei then found a very influential agent through which it approached Alstom.Alstom just took over a non-telecom core business metropolitan area network project, but this project is in the Czech Republic.At that time, Alstom had not yet found an equipment supplier with a more suitable price, so it carried out the first cooperation with Huawei with the idea of ​​giving it a try.The result of this cooperation is very satisfactory, and Huawei has become a little famous in France.Then, also through agents, Huawei found LDCOM, which was still small at the time, and made its first big business.

Wen Qun, general manager of Huawei's French branch, believes that the French are very similar to the Chinese. "The French are the Chinese in Europe. They also like delicious food, and they especially care about friendship." Now, Wen Qun also takes a French name Patrick, dresses in French style, tastes French cuisine, and makes friends with a large number of French friends. friend. The Netherlands is located in a low swamp with beautiful scenery, and enjoys the reputation of "the capital of flowers".Flowers are beautiful, but business cannot bloom as beautifully as flowers.

On December 8, 2004, in The Hague, the Netherlands, Ren Zhengfei, President of Huawei, and Tong Ann de Steiger, CEO of Telfort, the Netherlands, signed a WCDMA contract worth more than 200 million euros.Chen Haijun, general manager of Huawei Netherlands, could hardly contain his excitement.Ren Zhengfei, who usually does not drink alcohol, invited all Huawei employees working in the Netherlands to a dinner in the next two days, and made an exception for a drink. It took a lot of trouble to sign this contract, and it was a false alarm.Before signing the contract, Ericsson, Telfort's 2G equipment supplier, urgently met with Telfort's CEO, CFO and other executives, and raised strong questions. Steiger, Telfort's CEO, was a former Ericsson executive.But what Ericsson didn't expect was that Telfort's executives suddenly became tough, retorting why Ericsson didn't pay much attention to Telfort before.In the end, the two parties broke up unhappy.

Chen Haijun has personally experienced the "Dutch Battle". He may be the only Chinese holding a foreign passport among the "top leaders" of Huawei's European branches. In June 2004, Chen Haijun began to contact Telfort through his acquaintances in the Dutch post and telecommunications department.At that time, Huawei did not even have an office in the Netherlands.By communicating, ? ? ?The Navy discovered that Telfort had obtained a 3G license in July 2000, but had not launched 3G services. He suddenly felt that he had discovered a treasure.One month later, he came to Telfort for the first 3G business exchange.In the following two months, Huawei and Telfort jointly formulated a 3G business plan; in the fourth month, Huawei formally submitted a set of tailor-made distributed base station solutions to Telfort.

Telfort has scruples in delaying the launch of 3G services.Through in-depth exchanges, Huawei people quickly found the crux of Telfort's hesitation in using 3G. The Netherlands is one of the most developed countries in Western Europe, and the mobile service competition is very fierce. Although there are only 16 million people, there are five mobile operators competing.The other four companies: Vodafone, Orange (a subsidiary of France Telecom), T-Mobile (a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom), and KPN are all world-class large companies, and they all have a set of solutions for providing 3G services. Considering its lack of strength and strong R&D support, Telfort could not carry out targeted 3G applications.And there is another problem: the population density of the Netherlands is very high, and people are very environmentally conscious.To install new base stations and radio frequency equipment must be approved by the owner of the building in which it is located, so that the cost required to pay is even higher than the value of the equipment. In response to Telfort's concerns, Huawei began to prescribe the right medicine.Huawei and Telfort have jointly established a mobile innovation center to study which mobile service projects are suitable for launching in the Dutch market.Based on the existing small base station solution, Huawei proposed a distributed base station solution.Huawei divides the base station into two separate parts, which can be directly installed in the operator's original cabinet or on a pole or wall near the antenna.In this way, more than 90% of Telefort's sites can use the original sites, and the total cost of ownership is 1/3 lower than the conventional solution. "We have taken a fancy to these two points of Huawei." Vande Wiel, CTO of Telfort, is very satisfied with Huawei's solution.Huawei went all out and finally won the project at the end of 2004. "Everyone thinks that Huawei won this project by relying on low prices, but this is not the case. The key to us is Huawei's commitment to contract execution and rapid response capabilities. As for the price, I can honestly say that Huawei is not Lowest," reveals Will. This project may eventually become the world's first commercial HSDPA project. In June 2005, Huawei and Telfort completed the first HSDPA commercial demonstration.This demonstration uses Huawei's HSDPA commercial data card with a built-in Qualcomm chip.Play high-definition video programs on-demand through a notebook computer, with high download speed and clear interface quality, just like DVD and VCD. "At that time, my son can use it to play multimedia games with players all over the world." Will said with a smile. The cooperation between Huawei and Telfort went smoothly and successfully, and at the same time, various equipment of Huawei also arrived at Huawei Netherlands.The office building of Huawei Netherlands is located next to the Arenal Stadium, home of the European football giant Ajax. This is also a place where global high-tech companies gather. The tall building next to it is the headquarters of Telfort.When the containers piled up in Huawei's downstairs square, the employees of Telfort were also shocked, and they ran over to look at Huawei's equipment, which made the Huawei employees in the Netherlands very proud. On June 29, 2005, Royal Netherlands Telecom (KPN) acquired Telfort, which aroused concerns of Ericsson, KPN's main supplier.Previously, Ericsson was responsible for the construction of KPN's 3G network, and the entire technical architecture used an old version.Gartner analyst Jason Chapman (Jason Chapman) believes that if the acquisition is successful, it will give Huawei the opportunity to sell its full line of products to KPN. Prior to this, Huawei had already won a big order from KPN. On June 7, 2005, Huawei signed a contract with KPN to become the sole supplier of KPN's national backbone transmission network in the Netherlands. This project covers all major cities in the Netherlands.This made Chen Haijun and the others really happy for a while, because he defeated the two "giants" Alcatel and Lucent. "Our goal at the beginning was to enter the ranks of suppliers, and we didn't care how much share we could get." Chen Haijun said, "When we heard that only one of the three companies was the winner, we were even a little worried." After requesting the three companies to ship their equipment to KPN's laboratories for testing, Huawei's equipment was shipped from China to The Hague, the Netherlands, before Alcatel's equipment arrived.In the end, Huawei got its wish and enjoyed the feast exclusively. A Huawei employee said proudly: "In the Netherlands, we worked with the mobile leader (Ericsson) and the fixed network leader (Alcatel), and we won both." The British give people the impression of being polite and gentlemanly, without the romance of the French, the staidness of the Germans, and the melancholy of the Russians.Ren Zhengfei and his team also visited this gentleman's country. An interesting little episode happened here.In the small town of Basingstoke, 50 miles southwest of London, a meticulous old British janitor in a white shirt and tie eagerly asked Huawei employees: "Are you from Huawei?" ? Can you introduce this company to me? I have never heard of this Chinese company before, and now it wants to rent our entire building!" In the small town of Basingstoke, a three-storey building in the shape of a "concave" was built a year ago and has been empty.Huawei has leased half of the 6,800-square-meter building and is preparing to acquire the remaining half. At the beginning of 2006, most of Huawei's employees in the UK will move here, ending the history of Huawei's European headquarters, European technical support and training center, and UK branch.After five years of hard work, a formal base came into being. The only member of Huawei's UK team that is not planning to move over is currently in Ipswich Town.They are conducting intensive joint experiments with British Telecom (BT) technicians in order to launch the "21st Century Network" as soon as possible.This is a 5-year project with a total investment of up to 10 billion pounds! However, when Huawei first came into contact with British Telecom, it was not smooth sailing, but received a cold reception. The British did not believe that the Chinese could manufacture high-quality switches, and Huawei did not even have the opportunity to participate in the bidding.Later, the Huawei people finally knew the rules of British Telecom: To participate in the bidding, they must first pass their certification, and the targets of their bidding are all members in the short list they have mastered. To become a first-class equipment manufacturer, it is necessary to win a first-class operator. British Telecom, which ranks ninth among global telecom operators, is a veritable "big T" (referring to the world's top operators).It has strict market entry thresholds, and even many Western telecom equipment giants dare not take it lightly.To become a British Telecom supplier, you must pass their supplier certification, which needs to go through a strict program assessment. This certification takes a long time and covers as many as 12 aspects. To this end, Huawei established a British Telecom certification preparatory working group led by chairman Sun Yafang as the commander-in-chief and executive vice president Fei Min, covering sales, marketing, supply chain, human resources, finance and many other departments, and began to enter the "emergency preparation for exams" "state. In November 2003, the British Telecom procurement certification team came to Huawei and conducted a four-day strict "physical examination" on Huawei.In this assessment, technology is not the primary consideration. The management system, quality control system, and environmental system are the most important. It is necessary to ensure the predictability and reproducibility of Huawei's products delivered to customers.BT's assessment also includes the assessment of the operation and credit of Huawei's partners, the credit review of Huawei's suppliers, and even the assessment of Huawei's human rights (such as the living conditions such as canteens and dormitories provided by Huawei to employees). assessment.In front of world-class experts, many of Huawei's loopholes have been fully exposed. An expert from British Telecom asked: "Who here can tell me, from the perspective of the end-to-end whole process, the top five problems that need to be solved that affect Huawei's high-quality delivery of products and services to customers What is it?" All the Huawei experts present were dumbfounded. When British Telecom experts inspected Huawei's ISC, they asked a question: "How does Huawei ensure the timely delivery of products?" The answer was: "We have very strict product shipment rate indicators for assessment." The expert was very rude. Point out that for customers, what they care about is your timely arrival rate. Experts further pointed out that Huawei has not yet made a clear business plan for BT. Except for marketing personnel, employees in other departments are not clear about BT's basic requirements for suppliers, so it is impossible to provide targeted support and support for BT. Serve. There are also some episodes that embarrass Huawei even more.During the inspection by British Telecom experts, a developer at the production site brazenly pulled out a circuit board from the rack being debugged without taking any electrostatic protection measures, put it under his arm and walked away; Unexpectedly, in the factory building where there will be problems, there is a puddle of water that does not know where it came from... After 4 days of investigation, BT experts scored Huawei in more than a dozen units, with a full score of 7 for each unit.In addition to getting 6 points in infrastructure, other hardware indicators also got higher scores, but it failed seriously in soft indicators such as the overall delivery capability of the business.This made Ren Zhengfei deeply understand that the reproducibility and predictability of enterprise organizations, as well as the modular power reflected in a series of processes and internal and external environments, have become the basis of modern scale management, and Huawei must cross this threshold. Before leaving Huawei, British telecommunications experts left a meaningful sentence: "I hope Huawei can become the fastest-growing company." This sentence contains a gentlemanly criticism, which greatly stimulated Huawei people. If Huawei is determined to go international, it must be recognized by the "big T".It took Huawei more than two years and hundreds of millions of dollars to learn the "big T".After hard study, Huawei entered the "short list of eight companies" determined by British Telecom's "21st Century Network". Cui Junhai is the director of Huawei's European bidding department.He joined Huawei in 1998 and joined the International Bidding Department in 1999.How many bids have been cast all over the world in the past few years, even he himself can't remember clearly. "However, the British Telecom mark will never be forgotten in the future," he said. In June 2004, British Telecom's "21st Century Network" issued its first bid.Hundreds of large and small suppliers participated in the bidding, and the scene was like a feast? ? .As the first project after taking office, Cui Junhai has been an old friend with British Telecom in the past year, and he went back and forth for five or six rounds of quotation alone. After arduous efforts, relying on its own strength, Huawei finally obtained the "golden key" from British Telecom in April 2005, and was officially selected as the priority supplier list of "21st Century Network". On December 23, 2005, Huawei signed a formal supply contract with British Telecom, and the door of the "rich club" was opened to Huawei. A Huawei executive said: "This is not just for British Telecom. It is for the management level of a world-class telecom equipment manufacturer. In the future, it will be a head-to-head contest, and no coincidences are allowed. Therefore, the process of Huawei's certification is actually more than the certification process. The end result made more sense to us." Entering the short list of British Telecom brings not only the future benefits of British Telecom, but also many related benefits that have already been produced when tickets to the "rich club" are obtained. On November 21, 2005, Vodafone, the fixed network leader, sent Huawei a "rich lunch". Recognized by "big T" such as British Telecom and Vodafone, it means that Huawei has obtained a passport to enter the mainstream European market.It is a key step for Huawei to become a world-class enterprise, and prepares the conditions for Huawei to join the ranks of the world's "Big Macs". Before 2001, for Europe, Huawei was only in the familiar stage, and it was not possible to talk about doing business.The biggest gain from "shopping" is not how many devices are sold, but the continuous exploration, which allows Huawei to have an overall concept of the European market and a new understanding of the characteristics of each country. "No one can see a rainbow without going through wind and rain. No one can succeed casually." After a lot of hard work, Huawei has become well-known in Europe. Huawei has opened up the Western European market.In the UK, British Telecom used Huawei's solution to build a VoIP long-distance commercial network, and British Fibernet used Huawei equipment to build an MPLS backbone ring covering the entire UK; in France, Huawei and LDCOM cooperated to build a DWDM national trunk transmission network covering Paris, Lyon and other important cities in France; in Germany, the rigorous Germans chose Huawei equipment to build the backbone network; in Portugal, the professional wireless operator INQUAM chose Huawei as its strategic partner to provide base station subsystem equipment for the Portuguese CDMA national network... … In the Eastern European market, Huawei has become the most important supplier of telecommunications equipment, with annual sales of hundreds of millions of dollars.Huawei won the bid for the first national trunk line project of Rostelecom DWDM, Russia's largest telecom operator, with a total length of 3,797 kilometers; it undertook the construction of a commercial network for CCB, a major Russian mobile operator, and a CDMA national network for BelCel in Belarus... In the friendly France, relying on agents and emerging operators to land; in the country of flowers, the Netherlands, defeating industry giants; in the most conservative Britain to gain recognition... After 5 years of hard work, Huawei finally gained a foothold in Europe.