The One Behind It All Chapter 42

On December 8, 2004, in the beautiful The Hague, Netherlands, Huawei President Aiden and Dutch Telfort President Tong An de Steiger jointly signed a WCDMA contract of more than 200 million euros. Chen Haijun, general manager of Huawei Netherlands, could hardly contain his excitement. Over the next two days, Huawei President Aiden invited all Huawei employees in the Netherlands to have Chinese food. He usually does not drink alcohol, but this time he made an exception. At the wine table, Aiden even showed rare boldness.

Huawei people have every reason to celebrate this victory. It took a lot of trouble to sign this contract, and it also gave people a false alarm.

Chen Haijun personally experienced the "Dutch Battle" and may be the only Chinese holding a foreign passport among the "top leaders" of Huawei's European branches. In June 2004, Chen Haijun began to contact Telfort through his acquaintances in the Dutch postal and telecommunications department. At that time, Huawei did not even have an office in the Netherlands. Through communication, Chen Haijun discovered that Telfort had obtained a 3G license in July 2000, but had never launched 3G services. He suddenly felt that he had discovered a treasure. A month later, he came to Telfort for his first 3G business exchange. Over the next two months, Huawei and Telfort jointly formulated a 3G business plan; in the fourth month, Huawei officially submitted a customized distributed base station solution to Telfort.

Telfort's delay in launching 3G services is due to concerns. Through in-depth exchanges, Huawei people quickly discovered the crux of Telfort's delay in rashly launching 3G.

The Netherlands is one of the most developed countries in Western Europe, and competition in mobile services is very fierce. Although it has only a population of 16 million, there are 5 mobile operators competing. The other four companies: Vodafone, Orange (a subsidiary of France Telecom), T-Mobile (a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom), and KPN (Royal Dutch Telecom Group) are all world-class companies, and they all have a plan to provide 3G services.