China-based Huawei Technologies has won a series of contracts which amount to over US$400 million from main-stream telecom operators from Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria in Africa. The cooperation covers a wide scope of Huawei products and solutions including 3G, NGN, optical transmission, switches, routers and Intelligent Network.
On November 1, 2004, Huawei won a US$34 million bid from Kenya's biggest mobile operator SAFARICOM to reconstruct and update SAFARICOM's Intelligent Network. Chairwoman of the board of Huawei Technologies, Ms. Sun Yafang, and Michael Joseph, President of SAFARICOM, signed the contract on behalf of the two companies.
SAFARICOM chooses Huawei as its partner not only because of Huawei's advantage to provide cost-effective products and solutions, but also due to Huawei's sound service-provisioning and research and development capability. It is reported that a number of western leading telecom gear suppliers had been invited to compete for the bid, but finally Huawei outperformed them with a good price performance ratio. Mr. Michael Joseph stated his confidence in Huawei's technical strength and regarded Huawei the best in the field of Intelligent Network service provisioning. "That's why we have chosen Huawei as our long-term partner," he said.
On November 3, Huawei signed two other contracts with Zimbabwe's state-owned fixed-line operator TEL*ONE and mobile operator NET*ONE, which are worth US$288 million and 40 million respectively.
In the project with TEL*ONE, Huawei will provide network expansion and optimization solutions, which include switches, national transmission backbone, CDMA, Intelligent Network and data communications products. When the project is completed, the capacity of TEL*ONE's fixed network is expected to increase by 500,000 users. The present dissatisfactory communication situation will get improved and rural areas and remote cities and towns will benefit from the improvement immediately. The project will help Zimbabwe build advanced national backbone transmission and datacom networks as well.
In the project with NET*ONE, Huawei will provide another entire set of GSM system and services in addition to the existing 170,000 lines of GSM that Huawei provided them early this year. It will help the company further expand its network coverage and increase the network capacity.
On November 8, Huawei signed one more contract with Nigeria's second large mobile operator Vmobile. Huawei will provide GSM base stations worth US$80 million to Vmobile. In addition, Huawei also signed with the Communications Ministry of Nigeria "The Agreement on Nigeria's Introducing Next Generation Network Communications Technology".
According to the agreement, Huawei will cooperate with the Communications Ministry of Nigeria in the domain of cutting-edge technology, involving fixed network, mobile communications, optical transmission and data communications. Huawei will offer Nigeria's telecom operators the most advanced equipments of NGN, 3G, Super-DWDM and high-end routers, and technical training, in the aim of providing better after-sales service and supporting the healthy development of Nigeria's telecom market. To fulfill this aim, Huawei has invested US$7 million to establish a multi-product training center in the Capital of Nigeria starting back to August, 2004, and has trained over 150 professionals for Nigeria. Huawei's commitment to help Nigeria develop its telecom industry has been highly appreciated by the Nigerian telecom operators. This time when the Nigerian President heard the progress, he was very pleased and encouraged Huawei to proceed even faster. "The faster, the better" he said.
As for the contract with Vmobile, Huawei, as the main provider of Vmobile, will deploy GSM wireless equipment across 15 of the 36 Nigerian states, whereby Huawei is about to acquire another substantial market share of Nigeria's telecom market in addition to the 40% market share it has gained when serving as the partner of Nigeria's largest mobile operator MTN. This contract enables Huawei to become the most mainstream telecom gear provider in Nigeria.
Since 1999 when it began to develop African market, Huawei has gradually built its brand image as China's cutting-edge high-tech company among African leading telecom operators, with its high-quality products, excellent service and customized solutions. In October 2004, Mauritius operator EMTEL signed the commercial 3G contract with Huawei, making it the first such contract in Africa. Currently, Huawei has set up approximately 30 branch offices in Africa, and has deployed products in almost 40 African countries.
Last year, Huawei achieved US$ 1.05 billion sales revenue from the international market. In 2004, Huawei is looking at over US$ 2 billion sales revenue coming from the international market.