Dutch mobile operator Telfort has turned to China’s Huawei Technologies to deliver and install a nationwide UMTS network in the Netherlands – Huawei’s first European victory for its UMTS 3G product line, although it has sold other of its products on the continent.
The contract, signed yesterday, was considered to be a landmark of such significance that both the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and the Premier of China showed up for a formal signing ceremony. As part of the deal, Huawei agreed to support Telfort's efforts to develop mobile data services in the Netherlands market by setting up a R&D center in Amsterdam.
Meanwhile, at almost the same moment as Huawei’s first European deal was being signed, Huawei’s Texas-based U.S. subsidiary FutureWei was busy announcing that it’s first commercial deployment in the United States had gone live. In that deal, Huawei is supplying a wireless network – the Airbridge CDMA 2000 -- to NTCH Inc., which operates under the Clear Talk brand name. The system is serving approximately 358,000 POPs in El Centro, Calif., and in Yuma, Ariz. In addition to voice services, the Huawei system is dishing up Short Messaging Services (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) and 1X data services.
The twin victories, representing Huawei’s initial UMTS penetration into Europe and CDMA in the Americas, already are raising eyebrows in competitors’ boardrooms around the world. The U.S. deal is considered relatively small but nonetheless significant in a market where the likes of Motorola, Lucent and Nortel dominate. Guesses are that the Dutch deal is worth between $250 million and $500 million, and Huawei appears to have pushed aside Telfort’s incumbent supplier, Ericsson.
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发表于 2004-12-13 14:08:00