In June 2006, Huawei was awarded a network contract to construct a CDMA2000 network for Movilnet of Venezuela. Under the terms of the contract, Huawei would provide a wide range of CDMA20001X/1xEV-DO equipments, including Radio Access Network and Core Network Softswitch. At present, part of the network has been launched and put into commercial use.

Satisfied with Huawei's performance in the initial cooperation, in October 2006, Movilnet chose Huawei as it partner to expand its CDMA network, to cover several key areas in Venezuela. The total contractual value was up to USD100 million. After the expansion, Movilnet's CDMA network will become the third largest in Latin America, capable of serving over 10 million subscribers.

Both an Opportunity and Challenge for Movilnet

Cantv is a leading provider of telecom services in Venezuela, offering a variety of quality products and services relating to voice and data transmission, Internet access, cellular telephony and information counsultancy and so on. Movilnet is Cantv's wireless subsidiary and the second largest wireless operator in Venezuela, running CDMA 800M and serving 6 million subscribers. Verizon, a globally well-known operator, is the biggest controlling shareholder of CANTV/Movilnet.

Sticking to its vision of "to improve Venezuelan people's life quality by providing telecommunication solutions that exceed the expectations of subscribers" CANTV/Movilnet has been committed to network modernization to catch up with economic development and growing telecom demand. From 2005, CANTV has been providing subscribers high-quality telecom services with Huawei's U-SYS NGN solutions.

With a population of about 500 million and GNP exceeding USD 2,000 billion, the telecom market especially the mobile communications sector in Latin America has tremendous growth potential. According to the World Bank's analysis, by 2010, the Latin American telecommunications industry will need an investment up to USD 600 billion. Venezuela's telecom is one of most rapidly developing industry in Latin America.

According to recent statistics released by CONATEL, from March 2005 to March 2006, the number of CDMA subscribers in Venezuela increased by 107.63%.

Venezuelan good telecommunication market environment brings Movilnet good development opportunity and Movilnet's demand for further growth was urgent.

At the same time, the fierce market competition forced Movilnet to meet the unpredictable market challenge with differentiated strategy. José María de Viana, CEO of Movilnet, recently stated, "Movilnet is experiencing rapid growth in terms of network construction. The key to Movilnet's competitiveness in the market lies in its fast network construction and provision of rich services."

In addition, he said, the key of Movilnet's development is through further expanding the network, providing a series of special services to continuously attract users of all levels while holding high-end users with rich data services.

The Cooperation Between Movilnet and Huawei

To meet the rapidly growing customers' demand, in August 2005, CANTV/Movilnet invited a number of world-leading equipment suppliers to bid on its network expansion project. To ensure the quality level of the project, equipment suppliers had to meet three requirements set forth by Movilnet: First, the equipment supplier shall provide high-performance equipments to satisfy the differentiated demand of each region in Venezuela; second, the network construction should be able to facilitate Movilnet's subsequent network optimization; and finally, rich experience in the commercialization of the CDMA2000 softswitch would also be a key consideration of Movilnet.

This is a strategic decision of Movilnet, so the operator was very careful in choosing the supplier. Huawei's CDMA2000 1X/EV-DO network takes into consideration the needs of 2G to 3G evolution, getting ready for future service expansion and upgrade while saving customers' total investment. Besides, Huawei's CDMA2000 BTSs support various transmission modes such as, E1/T1, FE, STM-1, ADSL, microwave, and satellite, and feature open framework, broadband platform and professional radio-frequency technologies, guaranteeing fast independent evolution and harmonious development. As for the core network, Huawei's solution is based on distributed softswitch architecture and separate traffic control and bearer, being able to evolve to IMS architecture easily.

In April 2006, after several rounds of strict tests and reviews, CANTV/Movilnet finally selected Huawei to deploy its CDMA2000 1X/1xEV-DO network valued over one hundred million US dollars, including swapping part of its existing CDMA equipments.

To ensure fast network deployment, Huawei and Movilnet formed a specialized team. In only several months, Huawei helped Movilnet fininish transforming and optimizing its existing networks. Currently, some networks have been put into commercial use, helping Movilnet to greatly enlarge its subscriber base.

Huawei's excellent service won Movilnet's recognization and high praise. In October 2006, Movilnet decides to choose Huawei for expanding the networks in several other cities in Venezuela. This is a turnkey project. The expanded networks will be able to serve over 3 million subscribers when the projects completes at the end of this year.

Mr. José María de Viana, CEO of Movilnet said: "We consider Huawei as our strategic and reliable partner that can help expand our CDMA2000 network and meet our requirements. Movilnet plans to offer the best 3G multimedia and communication services to our customers in 2006. We firmly believe that our network subscriber number will reach 8 million by the year-end."

Huawei's innovative solutions create value for customers

Why did Movilnet choose Huawei? A technical director of the project considered that with the expanding scale of Movilnet mobile network in recent years, Movilnet has been increasing its investment in network operation and maintenance. Huawei's customer-oriented solution can help operators to minimize operating cost and enlarge their customer base through rapid new service provision.

Huawei's network management solution makes it easy for operators to manage and safeguard network. It helps operators to greatly enhance the security in networking, attack and fraud preventing, right authorization management and so on.

Widely recognized by CDMA operators worldwide, Huawei's industry-leading BTS features open framework, broadband platform and professional radio-frequency technologies. Huawei Industry Leading CDMA2000 BTS family adopts modularized design and future-oriented architecture. Huawei's advanced CDMA2000 Base Station supports various transmission modes such as, E1/T1, FE, STM-1, ADSL, microwave, and satellite, and also ensures harmonious development of each independent component. While high-speed data access and abundant service is becoming new revenue source for operators, the superb EV-DO performance of Huawei Industry Leading CDMA2000 BTS will become the strongest guarantee for customer's investment.

As the first wireless communications solution provider to integrate Softswitch technology into a core CDMA network, Huawei bases its CDMA Softswitch solution on the technology of distributed traffic control and bearer, which offers such advantages as huge capacity and high integration. IP transmission solution enables operators to reduce transmission costs significantly. Huawei's CDMA Softswitch solution is serving over 18 million subscribers worldwide. In Pakistan, Huawei has deployed the biggest CDMA Softswitch core network with the capacity of serving 2,750,000 subscribers.

Huawei's CDMA2000 1X/1xEV-DO solution adopts separate networking method, which has little impact on the performance of the existing network, meeting the requirement of flexible operation. On the other hand, with the future oriented platform, EV-DO Rel. 0 is scalable to Rev. A and AIE.

"We look forward to a closer long-term partnership with Movilnet," said Mr. Jiang Yafei, President of Huawei Latin America, "Huawei's leading technologies and professional experience will allow our customers to enjoy high-quality network coverage and more diversified services."

Attention the long development of CDMA and growth with customers together

Huawei devotes the continuous R&D to CDMA industry in depth, with more than 3,000 engineers engaged in CDMA R&D, and is the principal member of 3GPP2, a CDG leadership council member, and a board member of IA450.

Huawei has established many R&D departments around the world. For example, U.S. department specializes in ASIC and CDMA algorithms, while research in Sweden and Russia is mainly focused on RF technology and RAN algorithms. India department specializes in software research, at the same time unfolds widespread cooperation and absorbs the local talented person and technology. India department has achieved the CMM 5 levels of standards. In China, Huawei has set up R&D department in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and makes broad cooperation with many universities.

Huawei throughout persists positive, cooperates and open manner to participate the 3G international and domestic standard organizations. Huawei becomes the important member in ITU, 3GPP, 3GPP2, CCSA and make long term close track to the standard formulation. Huawei owns more than 1000 patents in CDMA technology and has submitted over 14% AIE patents. To date, Huawei has won 31 CDMA2000 1xEV-DO commercial contracts and deployed CDMA networks serving over 60 million subscribers globally.

Mr. Cai Liqun, the President of Huawei CDMA Product Line, said: "As the leader in global CDMA field, Huawei will attention continuously the long development of CDMA and focus on our customers' market needs by providing excellent communications network solutions and services in order to consistently create maximum value for customers and growth with customers together."