Voice from Operators Tao of BusinessPerspective Winners

Initial issue 02/09

EMOBILE: the mobile broadband revolutionist

Vodafone Romania: growth from one 2G/3G network

China Mobile powered by All-IP

Internet puzzle: how can operators solve it?

Huawei views on future industry trends

At Huawei, we know that simple ideas can lead to big things. In much the same way a tiny acorn can grow into an oak tree, we strive to realize your

full potential through innovative products and solutions.

We devote 43% of our entire staff of over 82,000 people to R&D, which is just one of the reasons why the world’s top telecom network operators choose us as their partner.

We are committed to looking after your needs every step of the way. B y putting you first, we grow your business to be as lasting and enduring as the

oak tree itself. That’s why at Huawei, we help you realize your potential from the simplest of ideas, to ultimate success.

Mushrooming growth, rushing revenue streams and skyrocketing share prices are the goals of most telecom companies. In pursuit of these ideals, a close eye should be kept on development and market trends, then select one or more successful enterprises in the industry as a benchmark, drawing upon the strength of others to avoid costly and unnecessary mistakes.

In the past decade, the telecom industry has experienced dynamic growth and rapid development. In spite of ups and downs, transformation has continued unabated. New concepts, technologies, and models emerge in an endless stream driving the industry into new realms of communication. In 2009, against the backdrop of a global economic downturn, the telecom industry needs to adapt to meet new challenges and seize all opportunities to create even broader development space.

As a comprehensive telecom equipment and solution provider, Huawei pilots the same course as the operators. Development trends in communications technology, including full-service operations, mobile, broadband, and the Internet, expansion of communications networks around the world, increasing market competition and technology upgrades create tremendous pressure and numerous challenges for all of us in the industry.

There are many questions such as: What is the best way to ensure a smooth upgrade of current networks while protecting investment? How do you improve ARPU while reducing OPEX and CAPEX? How can materials, land, and man hours be saved while fulfilling the social responsibility of environmental protection, energy conservation and emissions reduction? How does a company enlarge the scale effect to cope with fierce competition in the global communications market? …

To ring in the spring of 2009, we introduced this new publication, with a keen focus on creative solutions for dealing with the myriad of challenges in the current telecom operations market. Successful players in the global telecom market are invited to share their thoughts, reflections, and experiences in strategic conception, market operations, and technological choices. In the columns -Tao of Business and Perspective, senior industry experts are invited to elaborate on industry development trends and evolution. By probing a host of Winners around the world, we will share with you their wisdom, experience, and vision.

We believe today’s rewarding practice promises to give you success recipes for the future.

Winning the game

Editorial

Sponsor Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

Publisher Huawei COMMUNICATE Editorial Board

Consultants Hu Houkun, Xu Zhijun, Xu Wenwei

Tao Jingwen, Huang Chaowen, Yu Xiangping

Editor-in-Chief Gao Xianrui (sally@huawei.com)

Editors Xue Hua, Pan Tao, Julia Yao

Xu Ping, Xu Peng, Li Xuefeng

Joy Zhou, Chen Yuhong, Liu Zhonglin

Michael Huang, Joyce Fan, Wang Hongjun

Mike Bossick, Gary Maidment

Art EditorZhou Shumin

ContributorsZhu Yonggang, Hou Jinlong, Zhang Xinyu

Lu Xingang, Xiong Wei, Xie Jingping

Yan Yun, Zhang Qin, Mei Zheng

Xu Yan, Cao Jianhui, Wu Yanning

Sato Masako, Yang Xiaoxu, Robert Fox

Tel: +86 755 28780808

Fax: +86 755 28356180

Address: A10, Huawei Industrial Base,

Bantian, Longgang, Shenzhen,

China 518129

E-mail: HWtech@huawei.com

Publication registration No.: Yue B No.10148

Kevin Tao

President of Huawei Global Technical Sales Dept.

The information contained in this document is for reference purpose only, and is subject to change or withdrawal according to specific customer requirements and conditions.

Copyright © 2009 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.No part of this issue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

For electronic version and subscription, please visit www.huawei.com

Initial issue 02/09

WHAT’S INSIDE

Perspective

Huawei views on future industry trends

11

EMOBILE: the mobile broadband revolutionist

07

EMOBILE is Japan’s newest and fastest growing mobile operator. In less than two years, it has already carved out a strong niche in mobile broadband.What are its unique business model and future ambitions? Dr. Sachio Semmoto,the founder, Chairman and CEO, will tell us.

Voice from Operators

Bharti Airtel: leading mobile revolution through innovation

01

Bharti Airtel is on a journey of excellence through innovation. This journey definitely has no destination. Other than that Bharti Airtel will continue to be a catalyst to India’s economy and an engine for the economic growth. –Manoj Kohli, CEO of Bharti Airtel

Huawei views on future industry trends

Internet puzzle: how can operators solve it?

Voice from Operators Tao of BusinessPerspective Winners

Initial issue 02/09

Vodafone Romania: growth from one 2G/3G network

China Mobile powered by All-IP Initial issue 02/09EMOBILE: the

mobile broadband revolutionist

Winners

Optus: opening up the outback21

PCCW builds a CDMA broadband bridge

28

Reliance: growth has no limit31

AIS keeps Thailand smiling25

Orange dreams come true35

MegaFon transforms and prepares for 3G

42

China Mobile powered by All-IP

39

Internet puzzle: how can operators solve it?

15

Tao of Business

Kevin Lee from In-Stat: Operators are in quite a predicament with value-added Internet services. But they are too big and slow on the uptake, not able to move as quickly as the small companies. How can operators solve the puzzle?

Inspiration from Internet business models

18

Internet reinforces its leading position with a growing penetration rate and fast-increasing user base. Can telecom operators transplant the Internet-related technologies and successful business models, so as to find a new profit stream?

Vodafone Romania: growth from one 2G/3G network

45

In April 2008, Vodafone Romania heaved a sigh of relief: They no longer had to deal with the maintenance of independent and complicated 2G and 3G networks.

Win-Win / FEB 2009

VOICEFROM OPERATORS

leading mobile revolution through innovation

Seizing the huge potential

ndia has the second largest population in the world. In a couple of decades, India will probably surpass China in population. The GDP growth rate, which was around 9% in India has marginally come down

to about 7%. This is actually a sustainable growth rate, given the current global financial impact of today. The GDP of India is about USD1 trillion and grows at a rate of about 8% a year. In six years, we can double the GDP to USD2 trillion .

The India telecom sector will be a catalyst to the growing economy and continue to show healthy growth both in customers and traffic at a very speedy rate. Inflation has fortunately come down to 6% from a high of over 12%, meaning that there is more and more disposable income coming to the telecom, media, and Internet services from other sectors. Luckily for Bharti Airtel, a

zero-debt company, financing is not a problem. We can finance the growth and lead future growth in a very robust way.

The mobile penetration is quite low at around 27%, with over 346 million mobile subscribers as of the end of December 2008, among them over 84 million are Airtel (wireless) brand users. Unfortunately, the broadband penetration is as low as 0.42% with over 5.3 million users. The good thing is that now the government is promoting broadband, targeting to reach 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010. The broadband revolution is following the mobile revolution and the Indian economy. Clearly, India has deep domestic demand and fantastic potential for growth in the next few years.

Key drivers of telecom growthBased on the prediction for the next five years for

IBy Manoj Kohli, CEO of Bharti Airtel

“What is most innovative about Bharti Airtel in my opinion is their business model and how they construct their company. It’s quite different from the rest of our industry,” recommended by Craig Ehrlich, former Chairman of GSMA. At GSMA Asian Congress in November 2008, Mr. Manoj Kohli, President and CEO of Bharti Airtel delivered a keynote speech themed Leading Mobile Revolution through Innovation, and shared with the industry peers their key to success.

Bharti Airtel

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Bharti Airtel is on a

journey of excellence through

innovation. This journey

definitely has no destination.

Other than that Bharti Airtel

will continue to be a

catalyst to India’s economy

and an engine for the

economic growth.

— Manoj Kohli, CEO of Bharti Airtel

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Win-Win / FEB 2009

the Indian telecom industry, the wireless subscriber base should grow from around 350 million in 2008 to 500 million in 2010. It is safe to say that India is the second largest market after China, but still a very large market with only a 61% projected penetration rate by 2012. The wireless revenue could be about USD37 billion in 2012.

What are the key drivers for growth? The most important thing is an affordable tariff, which is about 1.5 cents/minute. That is why the MOU in India is about 513 minutes a month. Second, incomes are rising, not only in the urban areas, but also in the rural areas.

Third, I can remember the handset price at the beginning was USD200. We now have handsets that are USD20. This is definitely a big trigger of growth.

Fourth, rural economic prosperity is certainly going up. In India, close to half of the economy is rural, and it is a cash economy. The money doesn’t go through banks. We have covered about 400 thousand out of a total of 600 thousand villages.

Fifth, the youth segment is going to develop. According to demographic analysis, young people are the highest percentage of the population in India. As many Asian countries are aging, the Indian population is becoming younger. The youth segment is important for all of the telecom operators in India.

Finally, new technologies like 3G are going to be launched in India in 2009, providing another very good growth opportunity.

The India telecom industry began taking off in 2003. During the last few months, we saw over 10 million net added subscribers per month in India. I don’t think any other countries in the world have achieved this kind of figure. It clearly shows that operators in India have rolled out the networks very swiftly and rolled out distribution close to customers, including their homes and offices.

Innovation-Airtel’s key enablerIndia is the most competitive and a very hard-fought

market in the telecom world. There are now about 11 to 12 players in every state. In October 2008, three international brands including NTT DoCoMo, Telenor and Etisalat entered India and heated up the competition. We at Bharti Airtel welcome competition, and believe we can actually become stronger as new competition enters the marketplace.

Bharti Airtel continues to lead the market, and our leadership is due to our commitment to affordability for Indian customers. Offering world-class, innovative and world’s most affordable tariffs at 1.5 cents/minute, we have achieved more than 33% of the regular GSM market share in India. More than half of our new customers are coming from the villages.

Unique business model

Innovation was not a choice for us, innovation was a necessity for us. For achieving the lowest costs for the production of minutes in India, we need to have the lowest cost possible. We therefore launched in 2002 a unique business model featuring outsourcing the five big portions of our operations.

First, we outsourced our network to leading international vendors. In the network partner selection, we began with a very innovative way of buying networks since we started in 2003. At that time, we were buying about 2,000 black boxes. We didn’t understand many of those black boxes as we are not technologists. But we understood customers, people, and the market. So we started buying lines and capacity from our partners. We paid the partners by every user capacity in terms of lines. We also had

VOICEFROM OPERATORS

Under our unique business model, we assume the roles of supervisor, planner, governor and quality control inspector. By partnering with strong global partners,

we are able to successfully develop and focus on the core competence.

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If the customer satisfaction goes up, these partners get more fees from us. If it goes down, these partners have to suffer.

By completely outsourcing the entire distribution of the company, we have built up the strongest distribution force in India. We have thousands of distributors and more than one million retail points in India. Our target is that by 2010, the number of retail points will reach close to 2 million. There is a match box distribution strategy in India–wherever a match is sold, Bharti Airtel’s services will also be sold. This will make our distribution the deepest in the world. We see that local retailer and local outlets are the best way to promote Bharti Airtel. Hence, we do not own the distribution of the company, including large showrooms with our exclusive Airtel Relationship Centres and other small showrooms that are not exclusively Airtel.

Last but not least, the passive infrastructure is all open for sharing with other operators. I think it is very important that we collaborate when the competitive intensity is at a cut-throat level in India. With more operators sharing the infrastructure, the cost of our network operation actually is coming down steadily. A clear example is Indus Towers, where Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular are the joint venture partners. I think in the coming few years, the average tendency will be that one tower is shared by 2-3 operators.

In conclusion, under this unique business model, Bharti Airtel has assumed the roles of supervisor, planner,

About Bharti Airtel LimitedBharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is Asia’s leading integrated telecom services provider with operations in India and Sri Lanka and has an aggregate of over 88 million customers as at the end of December 2008. Bharti Airtel Limited has been voted as India’s most innovative company, in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

managed services managed by vendors. Today, I can say that those vendors have given us the power to rollout up to 3,000 towers per month. I think this innovative business model has been very successful.

IT outsourcing is more innovative than network. IT is the backbone for any telecom company in the world, whether it is the billing system, IN system, or CRM system. So we went to IBM in 2003 and let them run our IT systems end to end. Now, all hardware, software, and services are handled by the IBM employees who work for Bharti Airtel.

IBM tailored 65 platforms for us and we pay IBM a percentage of our top line and revenue. There is no linkage with how many new services, new software, or new hardware has come online in a month. It is just simply linked to the top line and we pay this amount to IBM. There is a short case project for IBM globally. Based on the project, IBM is getting many new contracts in the telecom sector across the globe.

For customer service and call centers, we have five to six partners who are high quality global partners. We know that if every customer calls us each month, we will have 80 million calls a month. So we need very large capacity call centers. 70% of our present call centers are outsourced to our partners who are very high-quality global partners. 30% of the present call centers are being outsourced now and will be completed within the next six months or so. These partners focus on the output factor of the customers.

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governor and quality control inspector. By partnering with strong global partners, Bharti Airtel is able to successfully develop and focus on the core competence.

Product innovation

Production innovation is a delightful journey which has allowed Bharti Airtel to win the hearts of millions of Indian customers. Bharti Airtel comes out with new ideas and new products every month. Although some new customers don’t use them, customers like to feel that the brand image of Bharti Airtel is innovative and really brings new ideas every day.

Examples include the Micro Prepaid. We started it in 2004, and now all our million plus retailers offer this service. Through e-charging, low-educated or even illiterate retailers can use e-charging instead of a paper recharge card. This is a very good innovation that customers are delighted with because they can buy talk-time near their offices or at home. Retailers are happy because they don’t have to keep a large inventory on hand. Money is all kept on the phone, which is fantastic. More than USD5 billion in transactions happen on this system every year.

Another example is Lifetime Prepaid which we launched about two-and-half years ago. With the Easy Lifetime, a customer can stay mobile for his entire life by paying just about USD2 per month. Easy Lifetime is an unprecedented move in the Indian telecom sector. If you ask an Indian customer today which product he/she will buy, they will invariably say, “I will buy Lifetime Prepaid from Bharti Airtel.” Lifetime has lots of benefits for the millions of customers who are using it every month.

On the content side, Indian people are really passionate about music, Bollywood, games and a lot of other content. We have been very innovative in this field and we believe

that if we give more such exciting content to our customers that they use, it will keep them loyal to the brand.

With all these products launched, including Hello Tunes, Music on Demand, Easy Music, and Song Catcher where you can get somebody else’s ring back tones, Bharti Airtel has become the largest music company in India. We are not a music company, but by being a telecom company, we are the largest music company, because the volume of downloaded music is the highest in India and more than any other music company.

Innovation for the future

We see the future very differently. We feel that in the future, technology will give us speed. The service providers have to aggregate. Customers do not want to go to many brands, customers want to have one brand which they like, and hence service providers have to aggregate and make it simple. Customers clearly want affordability and the differences between customers will vanish. If you move ahead, some customers want to use more music or data. The rural market is opening up, while the industry is seeing lots of convergence, including media, telecom, and the Internet.

Exploiting rural and youth opportunities

On the rural side, we are doing a lot of work at 400 thousand villages in India. We are helping the farmers in India to get commodity prices, agricultural information and agricultural help lines for buying fertilizer and pesticide. We also help them to learn English. We are helping the fertilizer co-operative reach the farmers. About 55 million farmers are going digital, including doctors

VOICEFROM OPERATORS

Bharti Airtel continues to lead the market, and our leadership is due to our commitment to affordability for Indian customers. Offering world-

class, innovative and world’s most affordable tariffs at 1.5 cents/minute, we have achieved more than 33% of the regular GSM market share in India.

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FEB 2009 / Win-Win

on call, health care givers, animal husbandry workers, veterinarians, etc. We really are impacting rural India in a very big way.

Moving ahead, we also focus a lot on youth in India. They like chatting, dating, gaming, voice SMS. As an example, voice MSM simplifies the communication. We want to make our products and services a simple service like voice MSM that is close to the heart of our customers.

Mobile commerce is also a big potential area. In India, we have domestic money transfers amounting to about USD40 billion and international remittances around USD42 billion, so we have more than USD80 billion in money transfers that we can do in India. Recently, Bill Gates was in India and helped us to get the automation done for money transfers. I think the bank is helping us, and GSMA is helping us as well. Mobile commerce actually will be a big part.

Half the economy in India is a cash economy and we would like to help the consumers to transfer their money from one place to another, maybe from cities to villages, in a very secure fashion, so that people will have no worry of losing money at any time. We are helping customers go mobile with their transactions. For paying bills, money transfers, recharging and everything else, the mobile should be the only instrument needed instead of so many cards.

Innovation is core

Innovation is the core of success of Bharti Airtel. We will leverage the existing core capabilities to exploit rural and youth opportunities. We also focus on new business opportunities to gain higher share. Now we are focusing on the telecom wallet share. We are an integrated company, so we will pick up the entire wallet of our customers,

whether it is for the Internet, media, satellite TV or IPTV. We are continuously redefining our business model so that we can become more and more viable, and our cost structure should come down more and more in the years to come. Of course, we are doing mass customization of the backend systems. The backend system is a big strength of our company.

Innovation has to be based on “the smell of customers”. If you do not smell the customers, it is very difficult to innovate, because the innovation has to start from outside, and then into the company. You should know what the customers’ aspirations are for the next few years. We need to listen to customers and look beyond Airtel customers and even listen to non-Airtel customers too. We also have institutionalized the innovation framework within the company as the culture. Innovation can not be a department’s job, a function’s job, or a CEO’s job. It has to be carried out through the company. We have set up customer labs and we have rewards and recognitions for the people who really help us strongly in innovation.

Our vision is simple and clear. By 2010 Bharti Airtel will be the most admired brand in India across all product and service lines, loved by the most customers, targeted by top talents, and benchmarked by more businesses. Our passion to innovate actually continues. We are confident that this vision and its excellent execution will be able to achieve sustainable performance for many years to come.

Bharti Airtel is on a journey of excellence through innovation and through the employees’ passion. This journey definitely has no destination. Other than that Bharti Airtel will continue to be a catalyst to India’s economy and an engine for the economic growth.

Editor: Gao Xianrui sally@huawei.com

We also focus on new business opportunities to gain higher share. Now we are focusing on the telecom wallet share. We are an integrated

company, so we will pick up the entire wallet of our customers, whether it is for the Internet, media, satellite TV or IPTV.

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We are confident in providing a pipe.It is a pipe, but it is a GREAT pipe. High speed, flat-rate mobile broadband data is in itself a differentiated service.

—Dr. Sachio Semmoto,EMOBILE Chairman and CEO

VOICEFROM OPERATORS

Left: Dr. Sachio Semmoto, EMOBILE Chairman and CEORight: Eric Gan, EMOBILE President and COO(Photo courtesy of EMOBILE)

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r. Semmoto can be proud of his record as an entrepreneur. He is one of the co-founders of DDI (today part of KDDI), and founded the ADSL provider eAccess in Japan. In 2005, when

he founded EMOBILE–the first new mobile operator in 13 years, Dr. Semmoto imbued the company with his entrepreneurial spirit and said, “EMOBILE is totally different from the incumbents. We are entrepreneurs. We are a start-up. We are a venture. We are a totally different species. You have to change your mindset. Otherwise, you can not understand our company.”

A born revolutionist

EMOBILE was a different species at birth. Unlike traditional operators in the market, EMOBILE started as

a pure mobile data operator. With a strong belief that the whole broadband market in Japan would be the mobile broadband market in the future, EMOBILE focused solely on the 100 million user strong Japanese mobile broadband market.

Eric Gan explained, “We started off with data customers and slowly moved into the voice market. That’s very different from traditional carriers for whom voice is the main business, and if they have some time, they do some data. The mobile data market is a very new area. We were very fortunate to have the new spectrum and to have built a new network with HSPA from scratch in record time.”

EMOBILE began offering voice services starting from March 2008, but it is not a pure voice strategy.

He continued, “We are focusing our voice service on the data product, like SmartPhone and PDA types, which

By Julia Yao

D

EMOBILE, Japan’s newest and fastest growing mobile operator entered the market in March 2007. Skeptics thought they could not compete with the well-established and powerful big three operators –NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SOFTBANK MOBILE. Yet, in less than two years, it has already carved out a strong niche in mobile broadband, and at the same, dramatically changed the existing mobile landscape. In January 2009, EMOBILE attracted the second largest number of newly added mobile subscribers, bringing its total to 1.19 million customers. EMOBILE founder, Chairman & CEO, Dr. Sachio Semmoto and President & COO, Eric Gan unveiled their unique business model and future ambitions in an exclusive interview with Win-Win.

EMOBILEthe mobile broadband revolutionist

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Win-Win / FEB 2009

people are willing to carry as a second handset. Voice will be included in the data service. Like our new data modem, it’s a data card, but we put a voice function inside the data card. So, when people use it for data, if they lose the battery in the main handset, they can use the data card as the voice handset.”

When speaking of mobile broadband, content is often said to be king, and traditional wisdom warns operators not to become a dumb data pipe. Yet, EMOBILE deliberately adopts the open platform strategy for both devices and application. Customers can choose from a great variety of terminals that can serve all kinds of PC functions, at the same time, they are free to enjoy streaming content, financials, interactive game and security services etc.

Regarding the open platform strategy, Dr. Semmoto said, “We are confident in providing a pipe. It is a pipe, but it is a GREAT pipe. High speed, flat-rate mobile broadband data is in itself a differentiated service.”

Market leader in mobile speed and price

The “great” pipe delivers the fastest speeds coupled with the lowest flat-rate plans in Japan.

According to Eric Gan, “EMOBILE’s customers are very speed sensitive as they basically use the mobile for a PC connection. So EMOBILE positions speed as its biggest differentiator. We are ahead of our competition in 7.2Mbps HSDPA product. On Nov. 20, 2008, we launched our HSUPA product with speeds up to 1.4Mbps, which was the first time in Japan. We just have to be the

first one in Japan to do all these new services, compared to the existing operators.”

EMOBILE offers not only the fastest speeds, but also the lowest price. “We are also the first in Japan to launch flat-rate in 2007.” The flat-rate plan Eric Gan mentioned is as cheap as USD10 a month, considerably less than its rivals’ wireless-broadband offerings which normally range from USD40 to USD80 for equivalent speeds.

In addition to the lowest flat-rate, EMOBILE launched a revolutionary new data card bundling service with the UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PC) in July 2008. With a two-year EMOBILE contract, the PC is priced at USD1 to USD200, compared with USD2000 to USD3000 for some big name brand PCs and customers can pay in installments for 24 months. “This changes drastically the business model for selling PCs for first time in Japan. The market actually exploded.” commented Dr. Semmoto, “This is extremely good considering the financial crisis. Consumers spend less, our network has the cheapest flat-rate, and you can get PC for USD1, or USD100. This is perfect.”

To ensure EMOBILE’s ability to always lead in mobile speed and price in the future, Dr. Semmoto maintains that it is important to go for the mainstream technologies. “I doubt the future of CDMA2000, PHS and WiMAX, because major worldwide operators are moving to GSM/WCDMA/LTE as the mainstream technology. We are now using HSDPA, and we just started with HSUPA. MIMO EHSPA (HSPA+) might join the stream, and LTE is coming, but the issue is when and how.”

Competitive price structureTo provide the lowest price without sacrificing the

VOICEFROM OPERATORS

We started off with data customers and slowly moved into the voice market. It’s not a pure voice technology. That’s very different from

traditional carriers for whom voice is the main business.

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Editor: Gao Xianrui sally@huawei.com

fastest speed, Dr. Semmoto explained, “We are very cost-conscious compared with the incumbent companies. We have a lot of wisdom in regard to cutting costs. That’s why we have much lower costs and prices.”

One of the pearls of cost-saving wisdom is to keep the headcount as small as possible. “You don’t want to be a big company. Smaller is better. It’s the leader’s management philosophy. If you run the company like the incumbents, it’s a group of bureaucrats like government or big telecom companies.”

EMOBILE has a surprisingly small headcount with only 560 employees, and new graduates comprise more than half of the total number.

Eric Gan also highlighted the cost benefits by using small-sized Node B, “I think capital spending is the function of how to build the network. The radio station is the major cost for a mobile carrier. When deploying base station, operators normally put a huge cabinet in a big room with air conditioning. Also, it incurs more running costs, uses more electric power, consumes more rent and requires a higher backbone as well.”

“Now with the latest technology, aided by very small, briefcase-sized radio units, you can even hang the equipment on the wall. So the price to build is just one tenth of the traditional base station, and we can build them very quickly. In Japan, we have earthquakes. A lighter base station to put on the rooftop is always easier to negotiate than the traditional one. Running costs are much cheaper, because we pay less rent and use less electricity.” Eric Gan added.

The base station mentioned above is the distributed Node B designed and produced for EMOBILE by Huawei.

Now aided by very small, briefcase-sized radio units, you can even hang the equipment on the wall. So the price to build is just one tenth of the

traditional base station, and we can build them very quickly.

A robust futureDr. Semmoto is quite positive about future market

potential and said, “Although more than 80% of the Japanese population owns a mobile phone, there is evidence of an increasing demand for second handsets. We estimate combined demand in Japan is about 30 million additional subscribers. EMOBILE is focusing on this growth opportunity.”

While the current financial crisis brings a lot of fear to the industry, EMOBILE actually sees great opportunity.

“We are very fortunate that we completed full funding of USD1.4 billion in 2006 for the following 5 years until 2011, before the current worldwide financial crisis.” More importantly is that, because of the financial crisis, people tend to be more careful with their spending, which brings great opportunity for EMOBILE. Eric Gan added, “People may not want to pay for an expensive fixed line. Instead, they may opt to use a mobile phone with a modem inside just to cut cost. This fits perfectly with our strategy to target at the price sensitive users.”

Operators can not succeed all by themselves. To form strong partnerships with capable and devoted partners is imperative for sustainable growth. Dr. Semmoto has appreciated the collaboration and cooperation with Huawei. “Huawei from day one has been an excellent partner to us. In the past, Huawei was totally a stranger in the Japanese market. You have grown enormously in the last 20 years. You have now become one of the leaders in the telecom arena. I think that jointly EMOBILE and Huawei can be prosperous if we stay very entrepreneurial, very challenging and take risks.”

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By Wang Kening & Ling Yun

ver the last ten years, the telecom industry has grown and begun changing from the familiar patterns of the past. These changes have been driven by customer needs, technology changes

and the emergence of new business models. As the industry enters 2009, the global financial

turmoil adds a new dimension to an already complicated picture and deepens the existing challenges. The ability of the operators and their partners to rapidly seize new opportunities, anticipate customer demands and be able to quickly modify strategies will determine the ongoing success of the telecom industry.

Huawei is in a unique position to have insights into the divergent global telecom markets and this paper shares our vision of where the industry is going and our views of the key trends that will impact success.

Vision – networked world

The concept of a Networked World has been discussed for some time, but we are now seeing the results in everyday life. Driven by the rapid deployment of new technologies and emerging user requirements, the boundary between software, IT and communications has become blurred. Added to the traditional telecom operators are service and content providers from the Internet, media and entertainment industries and these players will have a major impact on the industry. Huawei believes that the future Networked World will be profoundly influenced by:

Mobile penetration saturation

At the end of 2008, the number of mobile subscribers topped 3.5 billion and projections show that it will reach 5 billion in just a few years, equaling the total number of potential users. Over 1 billion of those new users will come from emerging markets and this will result in a world which

O

Huawei Views onFuture Industry Trends

is fully interconnected and able to bridge the digital divide.

Ubiquitous broadband

The next few years will see the rapid deployment of high-speed mobile broadband and a major shift to higher speeds for fixed broadband. By 2013, 300 million new fixed broadband users will be added, doubling today’s total and, through the deployment of FTTx, they will have access to massive amounts of data. On the mobile side, 1.2 billion new users will be added to the 200 million current users as the result of the HSPA technologies. The availability of this broadband will allow “3 Screen” (TV, PC and mobile handset) convergence with exciting opportunities for always-on networking.

Cloud computing

As high-speed data connections become common for both fixed and mobile users, the opportunity exists to provide previously unavailable services from “The Cloud”. The opportunities from what is becoming known as Cloud Computing will be enormous. The ability to offer end-users access to sophisticated information services without the need to buy expensive software and hardware, similar to the way we use electricity today without the need to buy our own generators and diesel oil, will abolish the boundaries between have and have-not information societies. In the next few years, cloud computing will go beyond the discussion of concepts and technologies and become widely available.

A digital flood

In the 5,000 years of recorded history, mankind generated the equivalent of 5 exabytes (1018 bytes) of written information, but during 2006, over 280 exabytes of digital content were generated. Driven by high-definition, three-dimensional and user-generated content, the annual volume of digital information will

Perspective

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for operators to develop services and make profits.

Mobile broadband delivery

Exploding use of mobile devices for high-speed data connections is one of the most exciting frontiers in telecom. Functionality which was previously only available from wired broadband connections can now be used from mobile devices, opening up new applications that are based on location, status or even the proximity of friends. Delivering this high-speed data experience to mobile users has a number of challenges which must be overcome. When the network bandwidth reaches 100M, the density of base stations will increase by 50 times. Our consultations with operators has underscored that the increased complexity of site selection, backhaul transmission, signaling schemes and operation & maintenance is becoming a serious burden. Optimizing the coverage of a Metrozone, base station minimization, packet transmission and level transmission, as well as organization of networks, etc. have the potential to restrict the development of mobile broadband. Since 2006, Huawei had been focused on base station minimization, support for packet-based backhaul transmission and plug-and-play of self-organizing networks. These capabilities have been successful in solving the coverage problems of Metrozones.

SingleRAN advances

Continued rapid growth in users, along with the growth in mobile broadband requirements and advances in broadband technology will result in a very complex radio network environment. While operators will support market demand by quickly deploying new radio technologies, such as LTE, they must continue to support the existing GSM, EDGE, UMTS and HSPA networks for many years. Rather than building a complex “vertical” network of separate radios, the need is for a “horizontal” integrated radio network that supports voice, narrowband data and mobile broadband. Huawei has championed the “SingleRAN” concept to meet this need. With around 10,000 of these 4th-generation base stations deployed by O2 in Germany, the TCO savings of up to 30% and the smooth evolution capabilities are quickly proving to be a winning combination.

Tera-scale networks

Surging growth in data traffic continues to exceed the capacity capabilities of traditional telecom networks. Network modeling for developed countries in Western Europe suggests that data growth and network transformation to flat, All-IP architecture will soon require end-to-end Tera-bit bearer networks. The appetite for capacity will be even greater for countries like China and US that have large populations and

soon reach 1,000 exabytes, a veritable Digital Flood. The ramifications to the information infrastructure and backbone networks will be immense, with annual traffic growing by 10 or even 100 times.

Ten future industry trends

As we move to this Networked World, the factors discussed above will have real, practical impacts on the telecom industry. Emerging markets will become a major factor in industry expansion, but decreasing ARPU will act as stimulation for creative solutions. Uncovering these opportunities, providing products, services and support to operators as they deal with the emerging trends and successfully managing the impacts will be the key to future success. Huawei views the top 10 trends as being:

All-IP transformation

Operators are spending billions of dollars each year for network expansion, but are still not able to keep ahead of demand. We believe that the only way to build cost-effective, flexible and expandable networks is to move quickly to All-IP for broadband. This applies to both fixed-line networks, where high-capacity fiber-copper integration will become common, and to wireless networks, where single IP backbones will handle voice, data, media and signaling. In both cases, moving to All-IP control layers is also required to flatten the network and achieve CAPEX and OPEX goals.

Carrier-grade IP

As networks move to All-IP, it is becoming apparent that common Internet-oriented IP technology does not meet the needs of real-time delivery demanded by voice networks. In order to meet these requirements, a new class of solutions will be required. These solutions will ensure end-to-end high-quality voice-grade communications with carrier-grade reliability and maintainability. Without these advances, it will not be possible for operators to create the All-IP networks needed to meet the challenges of a Networked World.

ARPU deterioration

With most of the future growth coming from emerging markets, the low ARPU requirements of these markets will force operators to adopt creative solutions to capture the market while still maintaining profitability. As an example, 72% of the Indian population is in rural areas, where the current telecom penetration is only 13%. This is a wonderful opportunity, but the ARPU is USD3-5 per month! Clearly, low cost networks and low cost terminals will be key factors

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require broad geographic coverage. We believe that building a Tera-Scale bearer network will become a competitive requirement for leading global operators.

With extremely high extendibility, Huawei IPTime Solution has the capability of 80T as Router Cluster System, which will reach even higher with the development of 100G interface technologies. Its adoption of unified control plane enables seamless interactions between the IP layer and the optical layer. Such architecture can offer higher transport efficiency, increasing return on investment and enhancing operators’ core competitiveness in the era of broadband.

New voice business models

Current mobile network operators receive 70% of their revenue from voice services, a market category that is being pressured by a continual decrease in ARPU. There is a natural shift in focus towards the more attractive revenue from data services, but this overlooks a critical element of user preference. Voice represents the most natural, efficient and convenient way of acquiring information that suits all scenarios and surroundings. How to capitalize on this and how to leverage voice as a new channel for communication and information acquisition, such as with the web, has turned into one of the most-debated and most difficult technical propositions. It is our belief that there is huge market potential to tap in voice.

New business models are the answers to this need. A good illustration would be the “Best Tone” service offered by China Telecom. An industry-leading innovation and a fast growing service, Best Tone has become a significant driver for the operator’s voice revenue growth.

Value creation in broadband

While Moore’s Law will help decrease the cost, size and power of the equipment required to handle the massive increases in broadband data traffic, it can not keep up with the projected growth. The growth of the required equipment will result in significant increases in both capital and operational expenses, which can not be recovered from the revenue of passing basic data traffic. To tackle this challenge, operators will need intelligent traffic management to enhance bandwidth utilization, coupled with traffic-based user behavior analysis to generate additional revenue streams through targeted advertising or other new models.

Content and media services

To d a y t h e n e t w o r k i s t r a n s i t i o n i n g f r o m a communications vehicle into an infrastructure that sustains all elements of society. This will lead to a new trillion-USD market for businesses who provide their services over the Internet. As the new potential is unfolding,

leading operators are all looking to transforming to add content and media services, on top of their traditional pipe offerings. The content and media arenas require new capabilities, skills and levels of user interaction that will challenge traditional operators. The service experience, development methodology and business model are dramatically different and community-based interactions are emerging as the fundamental trait of future services. User-driven and user generated content will be the prevailing theme and a large number of personalized offerings will enter the market based on the long tail theory. These offerings will be nurtured by the changing character of the network, where sharp declines in the cost of services will make it possible for “niche offerings” to win. Take publishing for example: traditionally the cost of a book could be recovered only if multiple thousands of copies were sold. With new network capabilities, the digital world increases competition, resulting in an ecosystem characterized by radical cost reductions, sometimes to zero, making on-line books profitable even with a small volume.

Virtual computing

The ability to deliver high-speed data connections anywhere allows the world of computing to shift from “buying products” (computers, storage and software) to “buying services” (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS). This obviously is disruptive to conventional software and hardware vendors, but it also is disruptive to telecom operators because it provides an opportunity to re-think the boundaries of their networks. The network “cloud” can now include not only physical data centers, but also the virtualization of service capabilities that can be delivered along with dial tone to improve users’ lives. If we compare network traffic to rivers in the digital world, then data centers will be the future “reservoirs”. These new-generation data centers will require revolutionary shifts technologically, providing the capacity for massive data processing at a low cost.

Even in areas where economies are experiencing a slump, the telecom industry is still able to maintain and even accelerate its growth. Successful societies are going to require greater connectivity, placing the social responsibility of bridging the digital gap on the telecom industry. During the last ten years, an information world has taken shape. Over the next few years, the universal spread of high-speed, low-cost, anywhere connectivity will be the driving force for the telecom industry’s development.

In this process, innovation and transformation is an everlasting topic. Working together, we will create a truly connected world where people can have equal access to communications.

Editor: Joy Zhou zhouhj@huawei.com

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Internet puzzleHow can operators solve it?

By Kevin Lee from In-Stat

After the rousing success of the iTunes model of “Device + Connected Service”, Apple keeps playing to a full house around the world. One month after the service was launched, users of the Apple Store, the a p p l i c a t i o n a n d s o f t w a r e platform of iPhone, downloaded more than 60 million programs, generating a total of about

USD30 million in sales (1 million dollars a day average).By the third quarter 2008, Apple sold 6.9 million

iPhones, with sales of USD4.6 billion and became the third largest handset maker in the world after Nokia and Samsung. A remarkable achievement considering they did it by offering only two handset models.

Also, 77% of iPhone users say that they use more mobile Internet services than before due to having an iPhone; and among the top 10 services frequently used, six are mobile Internet applications. It is safe to say that iPhone is the frontrunner in the mobile Internet race with operators trailing behind.

Evolution of Internet consumption

When talking about mobile Internet services, it is important to understand the eco-system and the evolution of consumption patterns.

Fragmentation of time: Most people have limited

time and increasingly more content is trying to attract attention. The number of media types has grown from four in the 1980s to eighteen now. That is a lot of different media trying to capture the web surfer.

Voluntary evolution: If you carefully study the differences between telecom networks and Internet networks, you will find that the two types of networks are like “voluntary evolution” vs. “intelligent design”. The nature of the Internet resembles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, which emphasizes the “survival of the fittest”, while the telecom environment is suitable for intelligent design.

The Internet generally uses some basic tools like IP, HTML, XML, etc. for diversified terminal applications. Only a few applications will evolve on a large scale and the speed of extinction is just as rapid as expansion. Voluntary evolution can be controlled by no one. It is characterized by progressive evolution, local evolution, a prosperity period and an outbreak period. Other characteristics include: genetic drift, such as VoIP coming from IM; evolution under environmental pressures, for example, rich Internet content leads to the prevalence of search and community networks.

Google clearly sees the life cycle of “born and die” on the Internet and encourages small engineering teams to develop new applications and test them in the Google Labs. An application will graduate if it has sufficient users, or it will be left to die; survival of the fittest in action.

Internet survival: The Internet has indisputably become the first media. This is particularly true along with the emergence of video sites, and users can find a lot of

Tao of Business

Operators are in quite a predicament with value-added Internet services. By and large, they are too big and slow on the uptake, not able to move as quickly as the small and lean development companies. Cooperation

is their only option if they want to thrive in this ever changing and progressive environment.

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interesting video content on the Internet. Currently, more users are on the Internet than watching TV during prime time every day. It is no wonder that many professionals have an email complex. The first thing they do at a place with a network connection is to check their emails.

Grassroots: In the mobile Internet field, operators have limited strength. It is not viable for operators to depend on their own resources for innovation. True innovation comes from the grassroots and a large number of small companies. Currently, users are not satisfied with only getting content from the Internet. They produce content of their own; examples include the content, editing, ranking and reviews on some most popular video websites.

Grassroots involvement pools the wisdom of ordinary Internet users. One example is Goldcorp, a mining company based in Toronto that was having trouble locating exploitable gold and launched the “Goldcorp Challenge”. Contestants found 110 possible mining claims, 50 percent of which had not been previously identified by the company. Over 80 percent of the new claims yielded substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated, an astounding eight million ounces of gold have been found.

Social networking: Since Internet content is so rich, users gather as communities and conduct and interact on specific topics. This is the basis of the wildly-popular social networking. For instance, an active user of Facebook on average, stays in the community for over 3 hours, far more than the time he or she spends on traditional portals.

Internet predicament

The changes in Internet consumption modes have brought new challenges to operators. Operators have endeavored to take the lead in mobile Internet services, for example, proactive promotion of handset customization (from hardware, operating system to chipsets). However, operators have little control over terminals. Innovation and operation related to handsets are controlled by handset makers. The appearance of the iPhone remarkably improved the use of the mobile Internet for users, but operators do not have the ability to realize their ambitions.

Most operators lack comprehensive knowledge of the Internet industry and the operation of the Internet industrial chain. Moreover, operators lack the ability to innovate and cannot offer standardized products to meet the needs of the majority of their subscribers. Customers place more importance on participation and information selection. Operators have to cope with the “Long Tail” of the Internet.

In fact, the Internet usage habits are established and

the emerging mobile Internet merely uses another display and transmission pipe. Therefore, operators have to depend on cooperating with terminal manufacturers. For instance, China Mobile works with Samsung making custom terminals and even wants to launch its own handset operating system called the “Ophone”. In this environment, handset makers are given more power when negotiating with operators. Once handsets are in the hands of consumers, the manufacturers can use them to promote their own services, without paying attention to the operators, like the Apple Store does.

On the other hand, operators have to take advantage of being the transmission pipe. Mobile operators dislike being called data pipes. While they suspect that certain risks on the Internet will cause them to only be data pipes, just providing the connection for handset users to access data and doing nothing related to the Internet. If this is the wave of the future, then mobile operators are re-treading the path of fixed operators in an uneconomical manner.

From the commercial efficiency per bit (revenue per bit for operator), broadband access has much lower commercial efficiency per bit than SMS text messaging. In 2007, the revenue of China Mobile from SMS was approximately USD6.1 billion, while the revenue of China Telecom for Internet service was over USD4.5 billion. Compared with SMS, broadband generates an astronomical amount of traffic. Mobile operators do not want to tread this path when the bandwidth of mobile data is realized on the wireless spectrum that is already a scarce resource.

Faced with these conditions, operators first think of building a portal and only allow handset users to access the Internet through the portal. The portal of China Mobile is called Monternet. However, this mode was soon sloughed off and increasingly more third party mobile Internet websites have emerged. The “surf ” key of iPhone allows users to easily access third party websites. Portals like the walled gardens of telecom networks will most likely not succeed and possibly could even become extinct.

If this mode is not successful, operators have to improve the value of data traffic by enhancing the value of information through the telecom channels, becoming “information experts” instead of just “communication pipes”.

BizNavigator, Best Tone of China Telecom, and 12580 of China Mobile are all geared for precisely this type of transformation. However, such services cannot be said to be totally successful, because it is difficult for these value added services to be standardized like a telephone. Users have changing and diversified needs and operators cannot respond swiftly to meet their mercurial needs. Operators are in quite a predicament with value added Internet

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services. By and large, they are too big and slow on the uptake, not able to move as quickly as the small and lean development companies. Cooperation is their only option if they want to thrive in this ever changing and progressive environment.

How can an elephant dance?

Based on the advantages and disadvantages of operators and the characteristics of Internet services, mobile Internet services can be divided into two segments: Internet extension and mobile centric. Internet extension is influenced by the traditional Internet. Mobile centric refers to applications closely aligned with mobile services or applications with more mobile characteristics due to terminal factors.

“Borrow a hen that lays golden eggs”

For mobile operators, Internet extension services, such as search engines, do not offer much room to grow for operators as major players like Google, Yahoo, Baidu, etc. have the lion’s share of traffic. Cooperation is probably the best option. Google, Yahoo, MySpace and YouTube first generated their immense following with fixed Internet, and have now entered the mobile arena in cooperation with operators.

In 2007, Vodafone worked with Yahoo to launch mobile advertising, and worked with MySpace to launch MySpace mobile social networking. In 2008, Verizon worked with YouTube to provide mobile YouTube. In similar cooperative cases, operators have increased network traffic and the resulting revenues with help from the big names of the Internet. Once wireless bandwidth is broadened with OFDM, MIMO and other technologies, both mobile and fixed Internet will share the same destiny. Bandwidth is used up by Internet applications, and operators turn to being data pipes.

For mobile centric services, such as location based service (LBS), games and video, operators have relative advantages and can combine their understanding of user locations and applications. Operators can easily identify the location of a user through GPS and base station positioning, while subscriber privacy is ensured and operators can reach subscribers with SMS, voice or other approaches at any time. Currently, location is a key advantage for operators, and will be one of the core components of competitiveness in the mobile Internet era. This is why among the 10 top software applications of Google’s Android, nearly half are related to location.

Dancing with the Internet

If operators are not able to compete with the Internet giants, they can help them to offer better services. Take the content delivery network (CDN) for instance. Because more and more video websites desire to improve user access experiences, they need to have servers and mirrors at various network nodes, to allow visitors from different regions to have smoothly streaming videos. ChinaCache is such a company and to whom Tudou.com pays over 50% of its costs.

On the mobile Internet, there are still remarkable overlaps between telecom networks and the Internet. To remedy the situation, mobile operators can take following measures:

Terminal adaptation: Compared with the standard structure of PCs, handset terminals differ significantly from each other in hardware, operating system, etc. Operators may provide adaptation at the network side to reduce the immense costs of application developers for terminal adaptation.

Data mining/differentiated operations: Operators have a large base of subscribers. For example, China Mobile has over 400 million subscribers. Through data mining, the operators can know subscriber information, such as age, voice bills, occupation, income, etc., to better understand users and identify smaller market segments. In the future, operators may become intermediary service companies operating with subscriber data, which lays the foundation for targeted advertising.

Opening telecom capabilities: This is also known as mashup. A mashup is a web application done by access to open application programming interfaces (APIs) through HTTP. Mashups are for developers and presented as Widgets to users. A mashup is an interesting new type of application, similar to the API of computer operating systems.

EVDB for example, provides a database of events calendar. It opens the database, and a developer can develop new applications based on the web API, such as an agenda for reminders or where you should go at a given time. Google releases map data on the web, and craigslist.org, the classified ads site gives the link to Google Maps so real estate for sale can be easily located. Housingmaps.com was born in this same manner.

Some operators have indeed noticed and opened up to application developers for serving as the API of the telecom network. For instance, British Telecom (BT) offers the “I’m Hungry” service. BT gives the location information of subscribers to the application developers and their applications help subscribers to find the nearest restaurants and book seats by either voice calls or SMS.

Editor: Chen Yuhong chyhong@huawei.com

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Inspiration from Internet business models

Land of opportunity or a black hole?

As is known to all, the predecessor of the global Internet was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) developed by the United States Depar tment of Defense in 1969. In1990, the hyper text

protocols of Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau allowed the technology and application to swiftly morph into the world wide web of today. In less than 40 years, the Internet has grown from the original four nodes to around 400 million nodes, with over a billion users. This can be attributed to the web breaking out of the circle of science and research and being easily accessible to ordinary users and geeks alike.

Along with constant expansion, network performance has also consistently improved through software hardening (which uses hardware devices to replace software modules for packet forwarding). A number of new stars have been born.

We can see the shining stars as well as the dark side in the course of Internet innovation. In reality, there are far more losers than winners. Microsoft is a vivid example. They have invested heavily in Internet services including: Internet Explorer, MSN, Hotmail, MSNM, Live, Space, and Facebook among others. Their assets span the industrial chain upstream and downstream,

from television (MSNBC) to consumer electronics (Xbox 360). Nevertheless, the return on the Internet investment is nothing to crow about. It is obvious that, even for Microsoft it is difficult to succeed in the Internet.

Transitions of Internet business models

The earliest mass commercialization was the ISP era represented by AOL, and the business model was to bill dialup subscribers by usage or by the hour. Later, the Internet entered the portal era as represented by Yahoo!, and it gained revenues from display ads based on the number of clicks and views by users. The value of an ad depended on the popularity or amount of traffic on the site.

Then Google exploded onto the scene and led the search engine era and the successful model became targeted advertising. The value of this type of advertising lies in accurately steering the user to commercial sites he/she might have interest in making purchase forms.

The current era is represented by social networking sites such as Facebook and the business model shifts to recommended advertising. The value lies in word of mouth marketing, also known as viral marketing.

The commercialization process progresses with how well the Internet understands people. In the era of the portals around 2000, subscribers were just contributors of traffic. A popular saying was, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. The era of search, however, was focused on

By Chen Fudong

Internet reinforces its leading position with a growing penetration rate and fast-increasinguser base. Can telecom operators transplant the Internet-related technologies and successful business

models, so as to find a new profit stream?

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your intention and needs, and search engines gave you what you wanted. In the era of social networking, your needs are nurtured from recommendations by your friends. Even if you have no needs, a larger space is given for imaginative ad-driven business models. That is a primary reason why social networking websites have become so popular in recent years.

The ultimate objective of Internet is to perceive the desires of users. Therefore, every website endeavors to provide as many applications as possible. For instance, Google provides a wide range of seemingly unprofitable and even money-burning applications including YouTube and Maps, and numerous Facebook applications on its open platform. Their hope is to make users leave more historical data when using applications on the Internet, to manifest user behaviors from more dimensions, to identify values of the users via further data mining (artificial intelligence), to establish user profiles, and finally to provide high-value, precise ads to affect consumer behavior and drive profits.

This is one of the reasons why Google is interested in entering the mobile communications field. GPhones are carried anytime by the users who access various mobile Internet applications, indicating that increasingly more personal information is being digitalized. Fed with this

massive amount of digitalized information, the Internet is constantly enhancing its IQ and EQ, for a better and more accurate understanding of the users and the ability to provide services for them.

Cloud computing on the horizon

Cloud computing i s Internet (“c loud”) based deve l opment and u s e o f comput e r t e chno logy (“computing”); its infrastructure is intended to better support the ultimate objective of the Internet. Realization is still far off, but the goal is in sight and being driven by diversified Internet applications. It promises to bring about remarkable changes in the experience of Internet users.

Currently we need to install software applications before using various Internet applications. For instance, we use Outlook to discuss which film is worth watching, download the film with BitTorrent, open the film with Media Player, and enter forums or blogs to post our reviews regarding the film. Information on behavioral patterns is scattered in different applications and cannot be integrated systematically, plus the user has to re-install the applications to use another machine to run the applications.

With cloud computing, desktop and mobile terminal systems only need to have a browser. The user can use the same account to open the applications in different environments without worrying about whether the local machine has the appropriate software or operating system.

For instance, you just need to register one iGoogle account to use any combination of services (Gmail/YouTube/Blogger/etc). Your browser acts as a window that gives you a similar user experience with either a desktop device or a smart phone using either Windows or Android. Recently, Google released Chrome, a new generation browser, to promote the penetration of cloud computing, with enhanced browser performance, reliability, safety and other key features and improved SaaS usability.

As to the external business value of cloud computing, we can summarize it as: “to organize the personal information and make the Internet push targeted ads with more accuracy and value”, by following Google’s vision, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

“Plumbers” have a newfound status

With the centralized intelligence of cloud computing, it is not difficult to see that among the technical divisions, the backstage of the Internet is intensive computing for

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services; the terminals are for presentation of services; and the networks between the two components are the plumbing or pipeline for information transmission.

Many people are indifferent to the role of a network plumber, thinking that the ability to provide enhanced value-added network services should be the keynote for telecom operators to forge their core competitiveness. But, the Internet is a highly risky, highly profitable industry where only a fortunate few can mine the gold; while the requirements for traffic bearing infrastructure keeps on growing regardless of concepts, making it lucrative for the plumbers.

For fixed broadband networks, the number of end users is calculated by households; however, in mobile Internet, the customer base is calculated by individuals, who may have multiple Internet terminals. Therefore the number of terminals to access the Internet will be larger by order of magnitude. The data package of the T-Mobile G1 phone, which supports HSDPA, is priced at USD25 per month, equivalent to the monthly bill from AT&T for 1.5M DSL broadband. This just might be the reason why both T-Mobile and AT&T are quite enthusiastic about merely being plumbing contractors and introducing the G1 phone and the iPhone respectively and exclusively in North America.

Operators can introduce Internet experiences and related technologies to their services, particularly HD video services, to take full advantage of local resources, including infrastructure and user information and to improve the service ability of All-IP networks and increase profitability. Content distribution network (CDN) technology and location-based precise advertising technology can then be introduced into Multi-Play bearer network solutions. This reduces the pressure on bandwidth for large scale video transmission and improves the experience of end users, while improving the ability of revenue generation of services and opening up more revenue streams for telecom Editor: Li Xuefeng xuefengli@huawei.com

operators.The entire network solution is not just focused on

traditional networking abilities, such as bandwidth allocation and packet forwarding. Through integration of computing and storage, network capabilities will be stronger and more practical. With the standard optimization for digitalized information (XML/Flash/H.264/etc), the new network of “networking + computing + storage” is able to perceive services and contents; an understanding of both bit and byte information. Only in this manner can a telecom operator do a superb job as a plumber, while trying to create new services and business models using the network as an information circulation platform and improving its IQ and EQ.

There are two sides of Internet commercialization: It not only brings about both opportunities for start-up business and improved experiences for consumers, but also opens the door to those who profit from invading customers’ privacy or maliciously misguiding the customers via spam, viruses, spyware, malware, and misuse of personal information. More and more websites are trying to influence consumers by page layouts and various information rating and ranking technologies, such as paid placement, search engine optimization (SEO) etc. These are all aimed to direct traffic to a select group of sites, limiting the choices for casual users.

Apparently, these negative aspects damage the creditability of the Internet and loosen the cornerstone of Internet advertising. Google took “Don’t Be Evil” as its motto after it became popular, to alleviate any concerns, especially since Google has the best resources to be evil only if it wanted to.

The overwhelming success of Google is a testament to the adage that, Internet commercialization is a double-edged sword, and playing business integrity is the only way to ensure the sound development of the Internet industry.

The entire network solution is not just focused on traditional networking abilities, such as bandwidth allocation and packet forwarding. Through integration of computing and storage, network capabilities will be

stronger and more practical.

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Winners

OPTUSBy Li Xiaojuan Editor: Julia Yao julia.yao@huawei.com

Australia has an unevenly distributed population with relatively few people living inland in the outback. To achieve full mobile network coverage, an operator needs to invest heavily and in relation to technology, capital, and cost, make wise equipment and partner choices.

opening up the outback

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n recent years, governments around the world have ramped up development of moblie broadband. The underlying initiative is to bridge the digital divide with technology that

allows people in more remote and less-developed areas to experience the benefits of wireless broadband. Australia, with extensive hinterland and the very low population densities throughout its vast interior, provides a sterling example of need and fulfillment.

The wide coverage to bridge the digital gulf

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of broadband users in Australia now exceeds 3.5 million, or 17% of the total population. Canberra, the nation’s capital, has the most with 58% of households using broadband technology.

In Sou the rn Aus t r a l i a , t h e b roadband penetration rate is only 32%. Back in October of 2006, Telstra, the top mobile operator in Australia had deployed a nationwide HSDPA network, named Next G, operating on 850MHz frequency. The biggest competitive edge of Next G lies in its wide coverage–up to 98% of the population. The service penetration of the network is also worth mentioning.

In May 2007, the Australian government announced funding for building a national

broadband superhighway to extend access to under-developed areas. The goal of the project was to provide broadband services for 4 million individual and commercial users with particular focus on sparsely populated remote areas.

Telstra’s early advantage placed considerable pressure on Optus, the No.2 operator in Australia. Not wanting to lag behind, Optus quickly responded to the government afforded opportunity and commenced an in-depth search for a vendor who could offer the necessary combination of capability, value and coverage that would allow the operator to participate in this vital national project.

To achieve full mobile network coverage that reaches an unevenly distributed population across many thousands of square kilometers, an operator in Australia faces heavy up-front investment costs, all of which makes prudent selection of a reliable equipment vendor an essential priority.

After careful consideration, in December 2007, Paul O’Sullivan, CEO of Optus, announced a plan to expand the capacity of the company’s existing 3G network. According to the plan, by the end of 2008, Optus would improve network coverage from 60% to 96% (based on population), and expand the covered area to 650 thousand square kilometers. In addition, Optus would upgrade their existing network to HSPA with a download rate of 3.6Mbps. Meanwhile, Optus specified UMTS 900MHz as a core part of future mobile strategy and chose Huawei as their exclusive vendor for deploying the UMTS 900MHz network in rural areas.

I

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Winners

This moment is a defining one in Optus’ and the Australian telecom history–it’s leading edge, an Australian first and a first for the southern hemisphere!

The expanded horizons of UMTS900

Optus had already deployed a 2.1GHz UMTS network. Even in areas with sufficient 2.1GHz frequency resources, Optus still decided to deploy a UMTS 900MHz network to achieve wider coverage at lower cost.

Compared to the 2.1GHz frequency band, the 900MHz frequency operates on a lower frequency with a higher penetration capability and a single Huawei base station covers much wider areas. Tests proved that with a Huawei UMTS 900MHz system, 60% fewer base stations would be required for rural areas. With such a vast region to be covered, Huawei’s UMTS 900MHz was clearly the perfect choice for Optus.

In the past, Optus had invested AUD2.5 billion in their GSM network. Their top priority had always been to minimize network construction cost while introducing new technologies. By deploying a UMTS network on top of the mature GSM900 network, they would be able to take full advantage of sites and antennas in the existing network. This decision would not only help them introduce 3G services quickly in markets where network coverage already existed, but would also lower construction operational costs when expanding to cover new areas of the country. All of which could be passed on to the end user, building competitiveness and customer loyalty, in the form of lowered access costs and added, cost-effective services.

The remote area rewards of Re-farming

Despite its many advantages, UMTS 900MHz is not entirely free of challenges. This technology is still in the process of being fully exploited by supporting industries and the variety of terminals is limited. Currently, only one operator, Elisa, in Finland has deployed a commercial UMTS900 network, implemented on November 11, 2007.

When the UMTS 900MHz was introduced, the biggest concern for operators was interference between GSM and UMTS networks. A UMTS network capitalizes on the GSM frequency band. Inappropriate planning may not only jeopardize the performance of the UMTS network, it can also degrade the quality of an existing GSM network.

After extensive calculations, Optus found that they could only assign a 4.2MHz frequency bandwidth to the UMTS network. The greatest challenge for Optus and Huawei is to make a network with only a 4.2MHz effective frequency bandwidth perform as well as one with a 5MHz frequency. In response, Huawei made creative use of Re-farming, a network transformation process, to reorganize the frequency, cutover, and optimization of the GSM900 network.

The planning stages stimulated positive reactions from technical personnel on the combined Optus and Huawei team. “Although testing had been conducted in Europe, nothing is more exciting than witnessing the whole process in your own

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backyard,” one engineer said. Just the idea of implementing transformation over a large-scale trial network within only three months was something that stimulated everyone’s minds.

Test results showed that Re-farming could minimize the bandwidth required in construction of the UMTS 900MHz and the carrier spacing between GSM and UMTS networks. Addressing the limited bandwidth constraints, Huawei used wave-trap technology to ensure the performance of the UMTS network with 4.2MHz frequency bandwidth.

In April 2007, a maiden call was made between the UMTS 900MHz network and the existing GSM network in the South Pacific. Moments after completing his first UMTS900 exchange over the trial network, Darren Rogers, Optus’ Network Strategy Manager, announced, “This moment is a defining one in Optus’ and the Australian telecommucations history–it’s leading edge, an Australian first and a first for the southern hemisphere!”

The rapid deployment of UMTS900

With the biggest challenge of UMTS 900MHz behind them, Optus began to maximize the fast and efficient deployment features of UMTS 900MHz. The small s ize, l ight weight, s ite flexibility, and easy installation of Huawei’s

compact distributed base stations allowed for fast side-by-side installation with existing GSM sites. Even if a site was already crowded, Optus quickly discovered that Huawei’s BBU could easily be installed in a standard cabinet with 19-inch width and 2U height and the RRU could be pole based or installed in the same cabinet. in this fashion Optus was able to reuse the site resources of the existing GSM network in the UMTS 900MHz network, including equipment room, air conditioners, power supply, and transmission equipment.

Huawei’s Same-band Antenna Sharing Unit (SASU) scheme enabled the sharing of antennas between two systems with the same frequency band. Sharing reduces investment, frees the trouble of network re-planning, accelerates the 3G network construction, reduces man hours and speeds up commercial usage.

Thanks to Huawei’s innovative solutions, Optus saved AUD300 million and achieved its interim goal of covering 80% of the population by June 2008.

Recently, with the goal of increasing the percentage of broadband users in the total population from 96% to 98%, Optus CEO Paul O’Sullivan announced an AUD315 million investment plan to be exclusively applied the extended deployment of UMTS 900MHz. Optus also announced the intention of establishing a Mobile Innovation Center with Huawei to deepen cooperation and support the company’s overall expansion strategy. Optus and UMTS900 continue to open up Australia’s outback everyday.

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AISkeeps Thailand smiling

By Xu Yan Editor: Xue Hua xuehua@huawei.com

AIS can set the BTSs to GSM mode, ensuring communication quality. When the demand for mobile broadband services increases, AIS can add UMTS carriers to offer GSM and HSPA services simultaneously.

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s the l a rges t and l ead ing mobi le operator of Thailand–the “Land of Smiles”, Advanced Info Service (AIS) has realized a ubiquitous and rich

information network through its brands such as GSM ADVANCE, ONE-2-CALL!, GSM1800, and MPAY STATION, which cater for the 26 million local subscribers and tourists.

The dominant influence of AIS has ensured critical involvement in the development of Thailand’s domestic telecom industry which, in turn, has profoundly and positively impacted the Thai economy and its 64 million inhabitants.

Elevating 2G services

Thailand has been noted for its outstanding scenery and remarkably friendly locals. As one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, Thailand boasts an internationally famous cuisine and a wealth of attractions. In the first half of 2008, Thailand hosted around 5.62 million tourists; approximately 70% of the country’s industries are related to tourism, and over 7% of its GDP directly results from its visitors.

Fulfilling the communication requirements of this significant tourist economy is vital for AIS to realize full value potential. However, prior to 2008, this objective was hampered by networks in tourist heavy-traffic areas such as Bangkok. At that time, the AIS network for Thailand’s capital city was based on European-sourced equipment. Each cabinet occupied around 1m2, weighed up to 600kg, and only supported the S4/4/4 configuration.

Toward the end of 2007, AIS was confronted with untenable circumstances and apparently impossible problems. Service capacity expansion would require heavy investment in additional equipment rooms and related engineering. The resulting CAPEX coupled with a slow market response would have been disastrous for the company’s development and revenue streams. This situation was exacerbated by the network’s low power output and reception sensitivity, both of which restricted uplink and downlink coverage and greatly degraded service quality. Additional BTSs were clearly indicated to remedy this situation, but again this would increase the company’s CAPEX and OPEX beyond acceptable limits.

Back in 2007, the lag problems in Bangkok were not the only ones confronting AIS. The original

GSM equipment covering the northeast and south of Thailand had been in use for over five years; the original manufacturer was unable to provide further technical support; the network framework could not support EDGE services, and future evolution based on the old equipment was out of the question. AIS could not accommodate the apparent upgrade costs but, in the midst of a boom in Thailand’s tourism, if they did not upgrade they would lose vital end user revenue to the advantages offered by the improved quality of competing vendors networks. AIS had no choice but to refine its original network, particularly in peak traffic areas, and extend coverage to boost user QoE. The question was, how to do this cost-effectively and time-efficiently while hopefully gaining long-term advantages at the same time?

As 2007 drew to a close, AIS embarked on a cooperative venture with Huawei. The two companies carefully analyzed Thailand’s key GSM markets with the goal of invigorating the AIS network and accommodating immediate and future expansion. In early 2008, AIS embarked on Huawei’s solution for GSM equipment replacement in Bangkok, and across the major tourist areas of north, northeast, and south Thailand. In three short months, and in good time to realize benefit from the heavy local traffic increase and tourist surge occurring around April’s Thai Water Festival, a remarkable total of over 10,000 carriers were replaced.

In key areas such as Bangkok, AIS opted for Huawei’s highly integrated indoor and outdoor macro base transceiver stations (BTSs). Occupying less than 0.5m2, the Huawei BTS supports up to 18 or 36 carriers, and simplifies constructing S8/8/8 sites and those of a higher configuration. During seasonal traffic peaks, using software to upgrade RF modules in phases from one carrier to six carriers, AIS can now configure the Huawei BTSs to meet demand. The Huawei solution eliminates the need for on-site engineering and antenna adjustments, significantly reducing AIS’s O&M costs and accelerating their ability to more quickly respond to market requirements.

In remote scenic spots and along the highways linking Thailand’s tourist cities, AIS adopted Huawei’s small, six-carrier GSM BTSs. These BTSs meet requirements for capacity and coverage without the need for deploying additional equipment and equipment rooms, but can still be located outside and withstand the humid and rainy local climate. Along the highway to Chiang Mai, for example, AIS was able to discretely mount the compact Huawei

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GSM BTSs in an environmentally friendly ways that occupied no ground space, yet still allowed for easy, low-cost maintenance. Once again, AIS was able to expand coverage and quality while avoiding much of the previously anticipated high costs.

AIS realized optimal industry standards of GSM carrier output power and receive sensitivity. Subsequent road test statistics revealed that voice service KPI had been dramatically improved, benefiting both local and tourist economies through appreciation of the elevated QoS.

Solving Thailand’s 3G puzzle

Both voice services and mobile broadband services now thrive in Thailand. “Laying new fixed line connections is expensive and inefficient so high-speed mobile networks are Thailand’s best bet to realize the many social and economic benefits that arise from widespread access to broadband services,” said Ricardo Tavares, Senior Vice President for Public Policy of the GSMA.

Constructing a UMTS network over the operator’s mature GSM900 network would make it possible for AIS to quickly introduce 3G services to their existing market. AIS also required the solution to minimize network construction costs and OPEX in new coverage areas. With a 3G license, AIS regarded this solution as essential for successful launch of its 3G marketing strategy.

Prior to AIS selecting the 900MHz band for its UMTS solution, Huawei had already assisted Optus construct a 900MHz HSPA network in Australia with 4.2MHz valid bandwidth. This achievement realized the world’s first large-scale commercial UMTS900 network. This notable accomplishment reinforced AIS’ final decision to partner with Huawei to develop

The solution neatly sidesteps AIS’s difficulties in strategizing its 3G network and optimizing its 2G network. As a result, AIS will be firmly ahead of the game as the undisputed leader of the country’s 3G market.

the operator’s 900MHz-based HSPA network.In May 2008, as a prelude to expanding

service throughout Bangkok, AIS commenced operation of a 900MHz 3G network in Chiang Mai. By applying Huawei’s portable UMTS900 distr ibuted BTSs, AIS was able to quickly construct a commercial network without the costs of cumbersome hoisting equipment and complicated engineering. The resulting AIS network provides end users with HSDPA services at rates of up to 7.2Mbps. These accelerated speeds are complemented by Huawei’s stylish USB HSPA modems, which have emerged as a popular tool for many of Thailand’s laptop users.

In the near future, AIS believes the demand for mobile broadband services will increase and their UMTS900 network will be extended. In order to construct a UMTS network over the existing GSM network and realize unified access while maximizing site and antennae sharing, AIS is employing Huawei’s 4th generation BTS solution to replace earlier vendors’ BTSs and support both GSM and UMTS requirements.

With Huawei’s new equipment, AIS can set the BTSs to GSM mode, ensuring communication quality and wide coverage at a 60% lower power consumption rate than conventionally encountered. When the demand for mobile broadband services increases, AIS will be able to reduce the number of GSM carriers. Meanwhile, AIS can add UMTS carriers to simultaneously offer GSM and HSPA services, until all functional modules are set to the UMTS mode.

Huawei’s solution neatly sidesteps the difficulties AIS previously faced in terms of strategizing its 3G network and optimizing its 2G network. As a result, AIS will be firmly ahead of the game as the undisputed leader of the country’s 3G market.

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PCCWbuilds a CDMA broadband bridge

By adopting Huawei’s 4th generation BTSs on its CDMA2000 network, PCCW is now able to provide advanced broadband data and global data roaming services for both local and overseas’ CDMA subscribers in Hong Kong.

By Zhao Yahui Editor: Li Xuefeng xuefengli@huawei.com

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ith its strategic location and a history as an international finance center, Hong Kong accommodates visitors and business people from

all over the world, including CDMA subscribers f rom Nor th Amer ica and the As ia -Pac i f i c region. However, Hong Kong’s lagging CDMA infrastructure has for some time challenged the city’s ability to cope with subscribers’ broadband communication requirements.

In a decis ive move, Hong Kong’s largest integrated telecom operator PCCW decided to eliminate this problem. In November 2007, PCCW acquired a 15-year CDMA2000 operating license, and began construction preparations for its CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. A network.

Quality first

P C C W i s n o t o n l y o n e o f A s i a’s m o s t powerful communications service providers, but also a leading ICT enterprise. For PCCW, the opportunity to rapidly construct and operate a high-quality CDMA2000 network provided a means for the company to further enhance its brand equity in the Asian-Pacific region. Richard Midgett, the Managing Director of Mobility at PCCW, stated that, “CDMA2000 will enhance our capability in offering advanced broadband wireless services to subscribers. The technology will provide a valuable roaming footprint and help to further boost our brand.”

The increasing intensity of competition in Hong Kong has meant that network coverage and service quality have overtaken price as the preconditions

for market success. To realize a sustainable business model, PCCW sought a solution capable of delivering differentiated services quickly and economically. As a result, PCCW collaborated with Huawei in June 2008 to launch Hong Kong’s first CDMA2000 network.

Speeding the dream

Rapid deployment

Hong Kong is characterized by an unusually complex terrain that encompasses islands, hills and bays. The myriad fingers of towering buildings punctuate the city’s skyline. People crowd every square kilometer of Hong Kong and its bustling central business districts. All in all, more than 7 million residents, and nearly 3 million visitors every month, pack themselves into the densely developed areas of this incredibly dynamic city.

Not only is Hong Kong’s wireless network construction environment probably the world’s most complex, it is also extremely hard to obtain wireless sites, which is exacerbated by some of the world’s highest rental terms. Leveraging an existing investment, PCCW decided to co-locate its new CDMA network with its existing UMTS network to fully utilize resources and cut CAPEX. One problem was the prohibitively large size and voracious power demands of traditional CDMA BTSs. These negative attributes would dramatically increase OPEX and off-set any CAPEX savings, while adversely impacting the local environment.

With these challenges and factors in mind, PCCW found a solution with Huawei’s 4th

Operating a CDMA2000 network in the 850MHz band will give PCCW the performance, cost-effectiveness and network adaptability to own a decisive stake of Hong Kong’s mobile telecom market.

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generation BTS. Based on advanced power amplification and multi-carrier technologies, the compact 4th generation BTS is highly integrated and efficient. Not only does it occupy smaller space, but it also reduces power consumption by as much as 60%, which in turn lowers the power needed to cool equipment rooms. Moreover, BSC requires only one tenth of the power used in traditional solutions, substantially minimizing the network’s total eco-footprint and significantly curtailing OPEX.

Huawei’s 4th generation BTS adopts a modular and distributed design with a 2U BBU. In turn, the normal complexity of excessive cabling is dramatically reduced, allowing the unit to be housed with other equipment without requiring any special facilities. Small and light, the RRU can be installed near the antenna and connected to the BBU with fibers to reduce feeder loss. The coverage of the BTS is expanded, and installation is much quicker and less costly.

Enhanced performance

In addition to minimal TCO and rapid network deployment, PCCW imposed strict requirements on network performance and evolution capabilities.

Compared with the traditional solution, the Huawei BTS enhances transmit power and receive sensitivity by at least 3dB, which is equivalent to a 40% increase in coverage.

This in turn greatly reduces the number of BTSs required in the solution, while network performance and subscriber experience are also considerably enhanced.

Based on the complex environment for wireless network construction in Hong Kong, Huawei provided the innovative PerformA solution, which features a network health check function to improve overall performance. By employing comprehensive QoS and QoE testing technologies, hidden network problems can be quickly located and rectified to maximize overall KPI. Advanced performance translates directly into improved subscriber experiences, increased traffic and revenues.

Featuring high capacity BSCs, BTSs, and an intelligent QoS control algorithm for PerformA-based voice and data services, PCCW’s data service and control flexibility capabilities were significantly enhanced, all of which paved the way for high-

speed data provision across the CDMA network.Evolving the network by using Huawei’s 4th

generation BTSs based on IP and broadband technologies has increased PCCW’s RF channel bandwidth and transmission interface bandwidth to more than 20Mbps and 100Mbps respectively. Moreover, data configuration protects PCCW’s investment by enabling the BTSs to be used in multiple systems.

The communications bridge

In December 2008, after successfully completing its CDMA network in the Kowloon peninsula and the northern area of Hong Kong, PCCW launched its CDMA2000 services. Network deployment has been planned over three phases, the culmination of which will extend coverage to central Hong Kong, airports, railway stations, tunnels, and border control stations.

In the meantime, PCCW has signed roaming agreements with numerous operators including China Telecom, the Asia Pacific Telecom Group, KDDI, SK Telecom, LG Telecom, Sprint and others. Overseas CDMA subscribers arriving in Hong Kong are automatically switched to PCCW’s CDMA network and can surf the Internet through CDMA mobile phones or computers with a CDMA adapter.

With Huawei’s so lut ion, PCCW is wel l positioned to handle the intricate ramifications of this formidable city’s mobile broadband needs for many years to come. As Perry LaForge, CDMA Development Group’s Executive Director, points out, “Operating a CDMA2000 network in the 850MHz band will give PCCW the performance, cost-effectiveness and network adaptability to own a decisive stake of Hong Kong’s mobile telecom market.”

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Winners

RELIANCEBy Xu Yan Editor: Liu Zhonglin liuzhonglin@huawei.com

growth has no limitReliance Communications reduces its mobile network TCO through integration. Meanwhile, it adopts Huawei’s 4th generation BTS for network construction, laying a firm, cost-effective foundation for future growth and maintaining a substantial market share.

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RELIANCEManaging the largest network expansion in the world

ndia is experiencing the fastest CDMA subscriber and market growth rate of any country in the world today. Reliance, the second largest telecom operator in India,

was established in 1999, is an integrated telecom operator that initiated its original network almost 10 years ago. In recent years, faced with extraordinary competition from India’ several rival telecoms, Reliance felt an urgent need to accelerate CDMA network optimization and expand to address GSM network needs, while reducing CAPEX and maintenance costs through a nationwide integration program.

Reliance’s original TDM based CDMA network generated significant problems. Network coverage expansion entailed extremely high costs if TDM construction was to be involved, and network structure complexity and OPEX would both subsequently increase. There would also be some inherent impediments to the speedy launch of new services and the ability to conform to IP network development trends would be severely inhibited.

After an exhaustive assessment evaluation of the world’s leading vendors, Reliance embarked on a network commercialization contract with Huawei in late 2006. Just six months later, Reliance awarded Huawei 60% of their massive network transformation project. On July 12, 2007, Reliance and Huawei officially signed a long-term strategic cooperation agreement detailing a next generation

integrated digital network construction; integrating mobile and fixed lines; supporting voice, data, and video, and covering over 600,000 villages and 20,000 towns. The ultimate goal is to create India’s largest telecom network.

New and improved competitiveness

Reliance’s strategy is to quickly enter the GSM market and grab market share after shifting its CDMA network operation to GSM and CDMA dual-network operations. Simultaneously, they optimized the original CDMA network, improving competitiveness and keeping subscribers, while entering the GSM market quickly to maximize expansion.

Enhancing spectrum usage

The GSM spectrum allotment of Reliance is rare. It is not quite enough for large-scale networking in metropolises such as Delhi, Bombay, and Chennai. How to deploy larger sites with limited spectrum resources that could handle the demands of these densely populated urban areas? Huawei offered fast and efficient frequency reuse solutions to help them tackle the problem.

Reliance succeeded in deploying the S4/4/4 sites to aggressively reuse 4.4MHz bandwidth frequency sources. Limited spectrum bandwidth is a thing of the past and now they have enough to provide enhanced subscriber services in the

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As of September 2008, Reliance had 55 million mobile subscribers in India or 18% of the market. They provide coverage for 20,000 towns and 450,000 villages, with dramatic growth that shows no signs of slackening.

dense urban environs of these megalopolises. The U Interface Soft Synchronization (UISS) and interference elimination technologies are used to reduce interference between networks, allowing subscribers to enjoy better quality and experiences.

Saving equipment room space

With CDMA sites already being deployed, the extra space should be utilized for placing the GSM equipment to reduce TCO.

Reliance uses Huawei’s highly integrated GSM base station which supports up to 18 GSM carries by using one cabinet in an area of less than 0.5 square meters. What’s more, extra space is reserved in the base station for expansion. The footprint is small and the sound adaptability is so superb that Reliance is considering sharing its site resources with other operators to convert its costs into added revenue.

In big cities like Bombay and Delhi, co-location of GSM and CDMA sites is largely used by Reliance to share auxiliary devices like antennas, feeders, and power supplies. The construction cost is then far lower than that for conventional separate network construction.

Decreasing power costs

India has been dealing with a power shortage for years. As the prices of gas and coal rise, so does electricity costs and leads to soaring electricity prices. What’s more, due to equipment aging and electrical loss during transmission, the transmission

loss rate is up to 50% in New Delhi. Power costs make up over 60% of the Reliance’s operational expenditure (OPEX).

It was imperative to lower electricity costs in thousands of base stations while still providing excellent service. Reliance searched for the most efficacious way and found Huawei’s high-efficiency power amplification (PA) technology. The PA efficiency keeps ahead in the industry, cutting the power consumption of the base station by over 60% while providing the same coverage. This is important in India where electricity is expensive and the electrical transmission loss is high.

Moreover, Reliance adopted Huawei’s intelligent power control technology. When traffic is low, a single or even several carrier modules are used for subscriber services and other idle resources are shut down. Alternately, different parts of time slots on one carrier are shut down to lower transmission energy consumption. This way the idle energy usage of base stations is minimized and a high level of quality of service (QoS) is ensured.

Reducing transmission costs

In India, traffic is much more concentrated and heavier in some areas with a great number of calls in one base station or one BSC. In traditional GSM solutions, this kind of traffic is transmitted to the core network equipment and then sent back to the initial base station after switching. In other words, the traffic data stream starts out local, travels a long distance and finally returns back. The process wastes transmission resources on the uplink

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and downlink.To remedy the situation, Reliance adopted

Huawei’s local switching solution: In a base station, the traffic data stream is directly sent to another subscriber without traveling through the core network equipment, dramatically reducing the requirements for transmission bandwidth. If this solution is used in 40,000 base stations, a great deal of transmission and maintenance expenses can be saved.

Winning the future via an advanced platform

3G is a significant strategy for Reliance. One of the main reasons why Reliance chooses Huawei for GSM network construction is to pave the way for 3G.

By applying Huawei’s future-oriented GSM solutions, Reliance’s network can be easily upgraded to 3G. In Huawei’s highly integrated GSM base station, part of the cabinet space is sufficient for the need of capacity, and the remaining space can be used for placing Huawei’s 4th generation UMTS RF module and baseband processing unit. UMTS sites are supported by simply upgrading the base station, without changing its structure and avoiding large-scale reconstruction. In one cabinet, 2G and 3G networks operate at the same time, fully extending the life cycle of equipment.

Reliance can even use Huawei’s 4th generation

BTS to provide multiple access services. According to market development, they can smoothly adjust the system capacity to match network operation strategy. With the unified platform of Huawei’s 4th generation BTS, Reliance can combine multiple networks into one network, readily catering to the complex, capriccioso demands of the market.

The dual-mode operation of the UMTS/LTE and CDMA/LTE as demonstrated by Huawei has given Reliance complete confidence in future LTE evolution. Based on Huawei’s experience in smooth multi-path evolution, they are deploying the 4th generation multi-mode base stations to ensure smooth evolution from the UMTS to the LTE and from the CDMA to the LTE, creating a rock-solid, yet flexible foundation for the future. Network reliability, QoS, service innovation, and launch speeds have been rapidly improved so as to guarantee a fast increase in subscriber numbers, enhance customer loyalty and increase market share.

As of September 2008, Rel iance had 55 million mobile subscribers in India or 18% of the market. They provide coverage for 20,000 towns and 450,000 villages, with dramatic growth that shows no signs of slackening. Reliance is known for its network reliability and is reliably expanding because it understands the reality of telecom service in India and is committed to providing its customers with the best service at the best price. Huawei is more than pleased to be a reliable partner in their continued success.

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Winners

ORANGEAfter many years in business, and a massive operational effort, Orange now ranks fourth in the world and number two in Europe as a full-service operator. Meanwhile, the cooperation between Huawei and Orange has moved into the fast lane.

By Zhao Yuan Editor: Li Xuefeng xuefengli@huawei.com

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n Paris, London, Belgium, and even Egypt, you will find the uniform service brand of France Telecom–Orange, which has built its brand loyal customer base on outstanding

and responsive services. After many years in business, and a massive operational effort, Orange now ranks fourth in the world and number two in Europe as a full service operator. Orange has distributed its mobile networks in 23 countries, covering 110 million subscribers and operating the biggest 3G network in the world.

Story behind the glory

France Telecom has consistently been regarded as highly innovative among the world’s leading telecom operators and launched its three-year transformation strategy named “NExT” in June 2005. They have made great strides ever since. In 2007, France Telecom’s annual sales revenue was EUR52.9 billion, which was an unprecedented amount of income.

NExT is focused on mobile broadband service and subscriber numbers continuously rise. In 2006, there were 5.8 million Orange mobile broadband users, compared with 1.6 million users in 2005.

The number of broadband users kept streaming upward in 2007 and net profits increased by 52% compared to 2006.

It is Orange’s diligence that has brought those remarkable numbers. As one of the most powerful operators in terms of research and development in Europe, Orange knows quite well that network transformation is the most direct and most effective support to service transformation.

Success in transformation depends heavily on deployment of advanced networks that can smoothly evolve in the future. Success of mobile broadband service is also inseparable from advanced networks, especially for the high-speed data service. To smoothly develop mobile broadband service, strong co-operative links in the chain are indispensable.

Orange has stringent standards when it comes to choosing strategic equipment suppliers. Its partners must be leaders in the technological fields, stable and resourceful enough to cooperate on a long-term basis.

In early 2006, Orange launched the re-bidding for the 3G RAN project, which was to be held every three years. Based on strict testing procedures and whole-process auditing, the capacity test results showed that Huawei’s HSDPA, high-speed railway

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coverage, and power amplification efficiency were all beyond the expectations of Orange’s R&D department. Due to excellent product performance and distinctive HSPA solution, Huawei beat the competition and a successful co-operation between Orange and Huawei began.

Initial success in mobile broadband

The previously used 3G network could not meet the requirements for mobile broadband service development, so in December 2006, Orange Romania decided to swap its 3G network. As the sole supplier, Huawei changed and constructed thousands of 3G base stations in more than 30 cities for Orange Romania.

Upon completion of the whole network, multiple KPI values of the Orange Romania network surpassed those of the former network (e.g., the success rate of 2G/3G handover in the new network was up by 5%). The customer satisfaction rate was also markedly higher. The new 3G network elevated the subscription base up to 10 million in March 2008 for Orange Romania, which reinforced the Group’s trust in Huawei.

Similarly, the second largest operator Mobistar (Orange-owned) in Belgium also faced the problem of having to relocate the former 3G base stations. The focus was especially on Brussels, capital of Belgium, home to the European Union, and HQs of multiple international organizations. Many high level international meetings of all sorts are

held in Brussels each year, so ensuring high-quality mobile communications service is a top priority for Mobistar.

Based on a detailed survey and a careful plan, Huawei implemented the new radio network conforming to the local environmental conditions. Older network equipment was replaced with the new distributed base stations, lowering the call drop rate, enhancing the network stability, and improving the throughput capacity of the system bandwidth.

For the first time, Orange Belgium realized end-to-end All-IP after the new 3G network was set up. The end-to-end All-IP provided users with abundant services, such as mobile broadband, VoIP, and CMMB, and met the requirements for high-speed mobile data service during the F1 Belgian Grand Prix.

The NExT strategy has been successful from the beginning and Orange has officially started the strategic partnership with Huawei.

Pursuing green

Environmental protection, energy conservation and emission reduction lower operational costs while showing social responsibility. Besides new services for the high-quality network users, Orange is also actively responding to the EU’s Green Action Plan and diligently taking green actions.

Because of its large number of users and sizeable income, the sub-network in Poland ranks among the top four in the Orange Group (the others:

The Orange dream of providing a whole lot more advanced communications services to more people all over the world is coming true. The popularity of the brand shows the positive response from users.

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England, France, and Spain).The old mobile network created a lot of pressure

for Orange Poland due to the large sizes of base stations, high power consumption, and high total cost of ownership (TCO). The CEO of Orange Poland attached great importance to technical innovation and wanted development of the 3G network and HSPA. Nevertheless, the former equipment simply could not satisfy their needs in terms of HSPA performance and network evolution.

Orange started to test the RAN10.0 with Huawei in 2007. Comparing the former base stations with Huawei’s with the same configuration, Orange found that the power consumption of Huawei’s base stations was 30% lower than the base stations they were previously using. Then the news came that Huawei had successfully swapped this kind of base station for Vodafone Spain and the KPI substantially rose. Orange chose Huawei to adjust and expand its 3G network in Poland.

During construct ion, advantages of the distributed base station were obvious. The large-sized micro base stations of the old network must be installed by using a crane which costs EUR1800 each time. The distributed base station features a small size (1/3 of the former base station) and is lightweight, making it portable, easy to install by hand.

Meanwhile, prices started soaring after Poland joined the EU. Leasing costs for the equipment

room and electricity also rose. It was a timely implementation as the small size and low power consumption of the distributed bases station effectively lowered the construction and O&M costs.

A l l ba s e s t a t ions adopt the s ame type , configuration, and software. The BBU of the distributed base station can be integrated to the cabinet of the 2G base station, which integrates the resources, eases the O&M, and lowers the operational expenditure (OPEX).

The newly constructed 3G network is also outstanding in the HSPA capacity. Orange is the first operator to provide commercial HSUPA services. In a few months, Orange quickly took the leading position for 3G data service providers in Poland. User numbers increased by 20%, ranking first in Poland and the ARPU for data downloading doubled, strengthening their competitiveness.

Thereby, Orange Poland’s CTO specially sent a thank-you letter to Huawei’s project team. And Ms. Grazyna Piotrowska Oliwa, Chairman & CEO of Orange Poland highly lauded Huawei. “We believe that Huawei can enable us to implement the most modern telecommunications technologies and provide high quality networks and services, while significantly reducing the total cost of ownership,” said Ms. Grazyna Piotrowska Oliwa. “This contract recognises Huawei’s commitment to helping PTK Centertel to achieve its strategic objectives.”

Orange is pretty confident about the network’s smooth evolution in the future. With the open modular structure, the distributed base station of Huawei features rich functions, easy upgrades and respective evolution between the baseband and the RF. Meeting the LTE development requirements of the 3G network and ensuring advancement of the network in Poland should not be a problem in the future.

The Orange dream of providing a whole lot more advanced communications services to more people all over the world is coming true. The color orange is bright, warm, and optimistic; the popularity of the brand shows the positive response from users. Huawei is an important partner and has co-operated with Orange in constructing 17 sub-networks. With development of the Orange brand all over the world, the successful partnership between Orange and Huawei will surely grow as fast as orange blossoms on a sunny day.

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CHINA MOBILEMarket competition is cut-throat, and competitors are aggressively courting new subscribers with attractive subsidies and tariff packages. How does China Mobile adjust its development strategy to ensure the leading position?

By Wu Yanning Editor: Michael Huang huangzhuojian@huawei.com

powered by All-IP

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CHINA MOBILE

ew people are familiar with China Mobile’s difficult past. Without implementing an All-IP strategy earlier than its rivals, the Chinese giant might be away from

its rightful position as one of the globe’s leading operators.

As China’s leading telecom services provider, China Mobile boasts the world’s largest mobile subscriber base. Serviced by a unified, all-digital mobile network, its subscribers topped 450 million on November 30, 2008, while the number of new monthly subscribers to its services has reached a staggering 4 million. China Mobile’s GSM and GPRS global roaming services cover 219 and 138 regions and countries respectively. The creative addition of value-added services has culminated in 27% of its revenue deriving from non-traditional services such as CRBT, music downloads, and a range of Internet-based services.

Time for a bold move

2003, however, marked a year replete with difficulties for China Mobile. Market competition was cut-throat, and competitors were aggressively courting new subscribers with attractive subsidies and tariff packages. Internally, the company was

saddled with a TDM-based network that was at 80% capacity and betraying signs that customer demand would soon outpace its capabilities. While new domestic subscribers had grown from 60 million in 2001 to 62 million in 2003, China Mobile actually lost its new subscribers during the same period, suffering a sharp decline from 32 million to 24 million. This was nothing short of a crisis in a market with a mobile penetration rate of only 21%.

To reverse the situation, China Mobile decided to adjust its development strategy in a number of ways. Firstly, the company decided to reconstruct i t s ne twork wi th fu ture -or i ented nascent technologies to enhance service capabilities and reduce TCO. Secondly, it sought to transform its role from a “mobile communications expert” to a “mobile information expert”.

The legacy TDM network of China Mobile had been the largest mobile network in the world, providing services for 150 million subscribers a decade after its inception. Network expansion, however, would increase topology complexity, resulting in declined quality but increased ancillary costs, including the costs related to transmission, equipment rooms, power consumption, and human resources. In a bold move fraught with risk, China Mobile acted decisively and positioned All-

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IP transformation of the whole network is a grand project, it requires a partner who understands both IP and mobile communications technologies. We are pleased to have Huawei as our partner.—Ms. He Bin, Vice President of China Mobile Shaanxi

IP transformation as the core of its strategy, opting for a 3G-ready network that was optimized for the currently prevalent 2G environment.

China Mobile selected Huawei as its strategic partner to realize All-IP transformation due to the latter’s impressive aggregate experience in numerous related fields. The Huawei solution incorporated 2G/3G IP-based core networks coupled with a voice quality enhancement (VQE) solution capable of delivering carrier-class QoS for voice services. With a resulting 50% efficiency increase over TDM, the entire network was restructured to preempt the hidden problems that can infect a new

Reaping major benefits

Project progress was mirrored by the cumulative benefits visited upon China Mobile. From 2004 to 2007, subscriber numbers doubled, during which time traffic skyrocketed to 1.8 trillion minutes with a completion rate of 99%. OPEX was greatly reduced, with average MSC power consumption dropping by 63%, and 20% OPEX savings were gained by optimizing systems and centralizing O&M.

These reductions allowed China Mobile to penetrate the vast rural market, which propelled

IP infrastructure. To meet the requirements that the new

network dealt, China Mobile adopted a multi-level management system with centralized real-time monitoring, dual-homing, N+1 backup, and mobile switch center (MSC) pool. These measures optimized security for the variety of All-IP NEs.

The risk minimization strategy established three major strategic phases. The first phase constructed a tandem IP backup network parallel to the existing tandem TDM network in order to seamlessly migrate traffic to the IP network. The second phase expanded the IP bearer layer to the local network, under which the control and transmission bearers were based on All-IP. The final stage transformed the wireless access layer to All-IP.

the company’s growth rates with considerable force. By utilizing a dual 2G/3G IP based core network, China Mobile completed a crucial network control and service transmission phase in terms of 3G infrastructure without activating any of the risks that accompanied the scheme.

China Mobile acted swiftly and confidently in the face of a plethora of challenges from its rivals coupled with the lagging legacy network. The bold move to All-IP and the choice of Huawei as its partner spearheaded a flexible, reliable, and expandable network that drove China Mobile’s efforts to widen their market lead. As the network begins to accommodate more 3G traffic, the results of this far-sighted strategy are becoming more evident.

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MegaFonMegaFon was quickly expanding throughout the Russian Federation but their MGC-based network could not keep up. As the expenses mounted, with the looming award of 3G licenses, MegaFon decided to transform their network to All-IP.

By Lu Chao Editor: Joy Zhou zhouhj@huawei.com

transforms and prepares for 3G

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Winners

After the transformation, MegaFon could easily meet the user capacity expansion requirements for the solution’s large capacity of up to 3.2 million users in a single MSS.

egaFon was quickly expanding throughout the Russian Federation but their MGC-based network could not keep up. As the expenses

mounted, with the looming award of 3G licenses, they decided that they needed to transform their network to All-IP. After partnering with Huawei, MegaFon implemented an All-IP converged 2G/3G core network that reduces their costs and positions them to continue growing.

Covering the Russian Federation

MegaFon was the first all-Russian GSM mobile operator. It was founded in 2002 through the combination of a number of regional operators and provides end users with comprehensive mobile communications services across the Russian Federation. After telecom reform in 1992, Russia and the CIS telecom industry grew rapidly, especially the mobile market. By the end of Q3 2008, MegaFon has more than 41 million subscribers and its consolidated revenue grew 24.9% for the nine months past. MegaFon is committed to its goal to become the revenue leader in Russian mobile communications.

Out of capacity with surging subscriptions

Two factors were influencing the direction of MegaFon’s planning. The first was dramatic growth in users. The second was caused by the fact that Russia planned to release 3G licenses for operators to deploy high speed mobile data service at the end of 2007.

As a result of surging subscriptions, MegaFon’s existing core network was rapidly reaching its limit. Because the network was composed of old-style MSCs, which have a low individual capacity, the only way to increase capacity was to add more MSCs, but this would dramatically increase the network interconnections, raising costs. The existing network was also not well suited to handling mobile broadband connections, even for the relatively slow-speed EDGE connections.

Based on the deep unders tanding of IP network, MegaFon had rolled out a 3-step All-IP transformation strategy, covering fiber to BTS/Node B, IP-based core network, and IP RAN. One of the goals for MegaFon was to have a core network that could not only handle the growth of subscribers and low-speed data, but also be able to easily expand to support 3G in a way that optimized their investment. This new core network should simplify maintenance and reduce operational costs as well.

Converged 2G/3G All-IP softswitches solve the problem

MagaFon realized that the utilization of existing

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network resources must be maximized to host a 2G and 3G integrated network. Only in this way could MagaFon safeguard investment, lower TCO, and facilitate smooth future evolution to All-IP FMC networks. By partnering with Huawei, MegaFon implemented an All-IP converged 2G/3G core network that reduces their costs and positions them to continue growing.

The successful deployment of a Huawei IP mobile softswitch (MSS) solution that replaced the traditional exchange network solved the problems MegaFon was encountering. After the transformation, MegaFon could easily meet the user capacity expansion requirements because of the solution’s large capacity of up to 3.2 million users in a single MSS. With 2G/3G dual access support, MegaFon can share the 2G core network resources with upcoming 3G users which will substantially save CAPEX for future 3G network construction. In addition, the IP MSS solution also supported increasing the capacity of the existing bearer network.

Increased capacity, but reduced costs

Even though the network capacity was greatly increased, the reduction in managed control points reduced routine operational expenses. The use of VoIP on the bearer network, with Huawei enhancements to IP capacity and quality, cut transmission cost by 25%, power consumption by 60% and footprint by 74%. Huawei’s specialized

network design, high-quality products, timely delivery, and professional services helped MegaFon Ural capture emerging market opportunities, building a strong competitive position.

According to Mr. Roman, a network manager of MegaFon Ural, “Huawei mobile softswitches with high capacity have simplified the network and they are quite stable, especially on overload condition.”

Keeping a leading position When faced with a severe capacity problem

and the future opportunities related to mobile broadband, MegaFon chose to make a major change to their network to embark on an IP transformation.

To meet its strategic goals, MegaFon has been unrelentingly stringent in its choice of partner. TDM-to-IP transformation involves lengthy research, end-to-end solutions, and rapid network deployment. Not only does suppliers have to demonstrate relevant technological expertise, but their brand equity, service response, and delivery capacity are also under scrutiny.

Since 2005, Huawei has been MegaFon’s major partner, and the two have cooperated in a wide range of fields spanning mobile BTSs, softswitch, wavelength division transmission, IP bearer, and service. As a young, ambitious company, MegaFon remains committed to maintain its leading All-IP position through customization, innovation and evolution.

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Winners

VODAFONE RO MANIAIn April 2008, Vodafone Romania heaved a sigh of relief: They no longer had to deal with the maintenance of independent and complicated 2G and 3G networks.

growth from one 2G/3G network

By Zou Chun Editor: Joy Zhou zhouhj@huawei.com

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VODAFONE RO MANIAn April 2008, Vodafone Romania heaved a sigh of relief: They no longer had to deal with the maintenance of independent and complicated 2G and 3G networks. The

original 20 switch nodes had been replaced with six unified core network (CN) nodes. The network architecture was greatly simplified and capacity rose from 460,000 lines to 1.2 million lines. Because of its advanced network architecture, the network can seamlessly evolve to IMS in the future.

Leader in 2G and 3G

Vodafone Romania is the largest mobile operator in Romania, with 48% of the market. It has a GSM mobile network and has recently introduced 3G services. Vodafone Romania provides mobile services to 8 million users, accounting for 35% of the country’s total population.

Two networks, twice the headaches

When Vodafone Romania began to offer 3G services, they did so by implementing a separate network, exclusively for 3G. The 2G network used TDM-based MSC core network switches and the 3G network was based on ATM. As both the 2G and 3G networks grew, the network soon had numerous network elements (NEs), which had to be individually managed. This required a large amount of work for O&M and therefore exerted great pressure on human resources.

In addition, the individual network elements

had a relatively small capacity and could not meet the rapid growth of users, requiring continual expansion. This network architecture necessitated establishing a large number of small CN offices, each of which required expenditure on site rental, power, and local personnel. The overall result was a high level of CAPEX and OPEX.

One network for growth and low costs

To provide for future growth and to meet the demands for new services, while reducing operating expenses, Vodafone Romania decided to move to an All-IP core network architecture. This also would provide a platform to allow them to offer fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) services.

From January to April 2007, Vodafone Romania tested the CN solution provided by Huawei. The solution passed the strict testing on 643 items. In September 2007, Vodafone signed the project contract with Huawei to supply a 2G/3G integrated All-IP mobile softswitch network to support both the visited mobile services switching centers (VMSC) and the tandem mobile-services switching centers (TMSC).

The completed network was characterized by a more flexible networking model. The sixteen 2G MSC servers, two 3G MSC servers, and two transit layer gateway mobile-services switching centers (GMSCs) of the former network were integrated into six 2G/3G MSC servers and two standby MSC servers. This integration of the original independent 2G and 3G networks into a unified CN, greatly simplified the network architecture

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We were very pleased with the responsiveness and professionalism of the Huawei team. The outstanding result for this project is why we awarded them the Excellence Diploma. —Vodafone Romania

and enhanced the network performance.The All-IP mobile softswitches of Huawei are

based on the 3GPP R4 architecture, conforming to the GSM/EDGE and 3GPP R99 WCDMA standards, which helped Vodafone Romania transform the traditional TDM network into an IP network, which can interconnect with an IMS network in the future.

To create a secure and reliable network, Huawei also provided a dual-homed solution. When a server fails, the standby server takes over the services promptly, ensuring uninterrupted network operation.

Simplification brings service and cost benefits

During the deployment, Vodafone Romania did not need to upgrade the RNC/BSC, which helped reduce investment. Extensive planning and detailed procedures ensured that the cutovers did not affect the services of the existing network.

The completed network is characterized by a more flexible networking model. The centralized management and unified O&M of the network help reduce OPEX. Moreover, the unified CN minimizes the overlapping duties of the 2G MSCs and 3G MSCs and thus enhances the efficiency and quality of the network transmission.

With Al l - IP based mobi le sof t switches , Vodafone Romania succeeded in transforming its traditional TDM network into an All-IP network. As a result, the transmission efficiency increased and the network met the requirement of being able to support FMC services. Recently, based on this

set of CN systems, Huawei has provided Vodafone with the innovative MediaX system, a multi-party multimedia conference system for the fixed-mobile converged network that can provide new services to enterprise users.

The network transformation not only helped Vodafone Romania complete the evolution to an All-IP network but also paved the way for the operator’s migration to IMS in the future. By virtue of the advanced network architecture and clear evolution plans, the mobile softswitches of Huawei can support the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) R5/R6 and interconnect with an IMS network, which protects the operator’s investment.

Focus on new services, not operations

In Apri l 2008, Huawei helped Vodafone Romania complete all cutovers for the project. Thanks to Huawei’s advanced technologies and extensive engineering experience, Vodafone Romania presented an “Excellence Diploma” to Huawei for its performance during the project “Evolve CS Core Network to IP based R4”. A senior manager of Vodafone Romania noted that: “We are very pleased with the responsiveness and professionalism of the Huawei team. The outstanding result for this project is why we awarded them the Excellence Diploma.”

The new Huawei solution has helped Vodafone Romania achieve a significant transformation to an All-IP network, and greatly reduced OPEX while allowing it to add new services and protect its long-term investment.

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