MINSK, Belarus—Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies launched its pilot GSM network in Belarus. The ceremony, which looked like a clear advertising event, was attended by the Chinese ambassador and top Belarussian communication officials.
Huawei first tried to enter the Belarusian market when it bid at a tender for equipment supplies to the Russian carrier Mobile Telesystems (MTS), which is to launch a GSM network in Belarus later this month. However, MTS preferred its traditional vendor Siemens, which also launched a pilot network before the tender.
Huawei and another Chinese telecom company, ZTE, also have been actively expanding in the Russian market, however, with cdma2000 equipment.
Moscow Cellular Communications (MCC), an NMT 450 MHz carrier, which is building out a commercial cdma2000 network with the help of Lucent Technologies, said last month it had decided to add Chinese-made equipment to it. Mikhail Kosinov, MCC director for new technologies, said agreements on the creation of trial cdma2000 network segments were signed with Huawei and ZTE.
The Vedomosti newspaper reported that in contrast to Lucent, both Chinese companies are to supply their equipment to MCC free to push it to the Russian market, where NMT 450 MHz carriers are switching to cdma2000 technology that is soon to acquire a federal status.
The Chinese vendors insist their equipment is 30 percent to 40 percent cheaper compared with that of Lucent. But Leonid Platonov, Lucent business development director in Russia, fired back by saying: “It is easy to produce cheap equipment. It is more difficult to make it work without an enormous experience of CDMA network operation.”
