BT's Matt Bross on Huawei II

Total Telecom has just published the article on the Chinese vendors, ZTE, UTStarcom and Huawei - Chinese vendors: Route One - and their assault on the European market. Here is an interview with Matt Bross, BT Group's CTO, on his thoughts about Huawei to accompany the article.

Huawei Technologies is providing BT’s 21CN with access and transmission equipment “A copper node and a fibre multi-service access node, and coarse and dense WDM transport equipment,” says Matt Bross, BT Group’s chief technology officer. Huawei itself will not detail the specific platforms.

BT used several metrics to evaluate responses to its 21CN tender. These included a vendor’s ability to drive and sustain innovation, take risk out of project executing, and continuity provide what is needed to transform the network from a narrowband to a broadband one.

None of the some 75 respondents met BT’s end-to-end needs so the carrier focused on the particular domains of core, metro and access. And here Huawei was one of a choice few chosen. “Huawei can help take the risk out of the cost, integration, and the platforms they drive, in the [access and core] domains they play,” says Bross.

He stresses that Huawei was not significantly lower in terms of its pricing: “I don’t have personal knowledge of individual pricing but nor would BT spend a huge amount of time on unit cost as opposed to the cost of ownership across the product’s lifetime.”

Bross also has no doubt that Huawei will emerge as an innovator, and drive in market-leading areas. “You have two choices: either you decide that they will be fast followers due to their engineering and development or that, with their many thousands of young and bright staff, they will begin to innovate,” he says. “Not only do they follow thoroughly through with an answer but there is a ‘Why did you ask that, BT? What are they [BT] thinking that? What is the origin, why is this important?’ They find a response to the question in earnest and why you asked this in essence.”

He also believes that the understanding and experience Huawei in gaining in leading competitive markets, will hold it in good stead when it competes with North American and European vendors that will increasingly bid for contracts in Huawei’s home market.