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Huawei Technologies has been selected by Dutch mobile operator Telfort to deliver and install a nationwide UMTS network in the Netherlands including R4 based core network and UTRAN solution. Huawei will deliver a turnkey solution, giving Telfort full UMTS capabilities, interworking with its existing GSM and EDGE platforms and readiness for HSDPA. The UMTS contract was signed on December 8th in The Hague in the presence of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and the Premier of China and is the first success for Huawei with its UMTS offering in Western Europe.

Telfort's choice for Huawei was based on technical assessment of its products and capability and on contacts with other mobile operators that use Huawei's UMTS products in Hong Kong and the UAE. Huawei has also agreed to support Telfort's efforts to develop mobile data in the Netherlands market by setting up an R&D centre in Amsterdam which will focus on end user services.

"We are glad to have Huawei as a strategic partner for our developments in mobile data and UMTS," said Ton aan de Stegge, CEO of Telfort, during the signing ceremony. "Telfort's strategy is to challenge the established norms of the mobile industry and this contract, which is the first of its kind in Europe, is exactly in line with that. We are confident that Huawei will help us to develop innovative and cost effective data solutions for our customers and look forward to a prosperous relationship with them."

"Europe market is listed as the most significant market in the internationalization strategy of Huawei company. We are planning to spend more on construction of Europe service and supporting system which will be treated as an investment to secure our long-term supporting and service for customers at selecting Huawei as their partners. Constantly we adhere to the principle of localization in Europe, making the most of our partners, experience, and talents to serve our Europe customers," said Deng Tao, President from Huawei branch in Europe. "We strongly believe in the potential of Telfort to show that our UMTS product can be very successful in the competitive Dutch market and are committed to building a successful future with Telfort as a partner."

This is reported to be the fifth commercial UMTS network constructed by Huawei in the world. The previous 4 networks are respectively Etisalat in United Arab Emirates, SUNDAY in Hong Kong, Emtel in Mauritius and TM in Malaysia. Whereas the 5 operators in cooperation with Huawei didn't apply any part of Huawei equipments in their own 2G network, this is quite a proof that 3G network is not necessarily dependent on of previous 2G network. Thus operators have more choices of better equipment suppliers. Starting up as a fast-growing vendor in wireless market, Huawei has become one of the leading 3G vendors in the world, says Deng Tao.

By right of its leading technology, characteristic solution and satisfactory equipment steadiness, Huawei wins great trust from customers. Huawei stays in the highest flight in global Softswitch technology. It is the first supplier to release R4 Softswitch commercial version; it takes the lead in adopting R4 version in its 5 commercial offers under construction when R99 version being widely applied in most UMTS commercial networks, which endows Huawei with evident leading advantage in technology. On November, 27th, Softswitch equipments of Huawei company are equally applied in successful cutover and network-accessing of the largest Softswitch tandem network over IP whose construction is contracted out to the largest global operator-China Mobile. Technically, Softswitch has been brought to a mature and stable stage considering its superiority beyond equal in comparison with circuit core network. Many operators have already started to replace 2G core network with Softswitch which is also compatible with 2G/3G access network. Huawei provides Series BTS and characteristic coverage solution. There can be no coverage problems if only the coverage issues can be solved in Hong Kong, as some experts indicated early at the time of Huawei signing the Hong Kong 3G project. Especially, Huawei has won even more favor from customers for its innovative distributed BTS solution with which not only the coverage problems in landform complexity are readily solved but also a large sum of OPEX can be saved.

The Telfort UMTS project in Netherlands is the first UMTS 3G contract Huawei Company has ever won from Europe. We are firmly convinced that 3G will succeed all over the world. Here're the principles Huawei will continue to persist in: maximizing customers' profits and meeting customers' demands promptly as our top priority, offering solutions of high-quality, good services, low integrated costs, and creating initiative business models and building win-win cooperation relationship with our customers, says Mr. Deng Tao.