I am proud to announce that Bytemobile and Alcatel Shanghai Bell (ASB), our reseller partner in China, have been awarded Phase 1 of the China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC) Web Gateway project. Our Web Fidelity Suite content adaptation solution will be deployed at the national Web Gateway center in Nanjing to enable open web browsing from mobile handsets on CMCC’s 3G TD-SCDMA network.

CMCC is the world’s largest wireless network operator, with more than 470 million subscribers. The group’s operating companies cover 31 provinces in China and command a nearly 70% share of the mainland China mobile market. On January 7, 2009, the Chinese government issued 3G network licenses to CMCC as well as China Unicom and China Telecom.

Stepping Up the Competition
Adrian Hall’s blog post of April 10 – State of the Company – framed the significance of the CMCC win to Bytemobile in general terms:

Our global sales pipeline is significantly larger today than it has been in the company’s history – a formidable fact considering our 104 network deployments in 54 countries. The pipeline consists of a number of sizable deals that include multi-year commitments and leverage our entire product portfolio.

…we are competing more and more with traditional telecommunications industry giants such as Comverse, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. We are winning against them because of our agility, our laser focus on customer needs, and the strength of our technological innovation, execution and support.

Our competition for the CMCC Phase 1 bid included Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Huawei, and ZTE. Huawei and ZTE are both Chinese infrastructure equipment providers with a strong presence in the China market.

As a trusted advisor to CMCC, we were able to build positive relationships with key decision-makers. Visits to China by Hatim Tyabji and other Bytemobile executives have been instrumental in securing the confidence of CMCC senior management.

Successful Trials
With our partner, ASB, we completed successful commercial trials of the Web Fidelity Suite at Jiangsu Mobile and Hubei Mobile, two of CMCC’s provincial operating companies. We then closed Jiangsu Mobile for the implementation of its 3G Web Gateway solution. This deal led to the formal inclusion of Bytemobile in CMCC’s approved vendor list for the nationwide roll-out.

An additional 5-10 CMCC provincial operators are expected to deploy 3G Web Gateway services in 2009. Phase 2 of the roll-out will target CMCC’s GPRS and EDGE network subscribers. Phase 3, scheduled for 2010 and beyond, will proceed to the remainder of the 31 CMCC operators.

Given our initial success, complacency is not an option. CMCC has selected the Ericsson and Huawei proposals as potential back-up solutions to ours. We must continue to execute and deliver results in order to remain the preferred supplier and realize the full potential of this opportunity.

Teamwork Across the Organization
Our winning bid at CMCC culminated a cross-functional team effort that exemplified the Bytemobile culture in action. Key contributors included:

The Beijing office of the Asia-Pacific team

• Li Xiaohe (Michael Li), Bytemobile China general manager
• Ada Hang
• Louisa Liu
• Kane Qiao
• Frank Su
• Johnson Wang
• Wayne Wang
• Anna Zeng
• Jerry Zhang

The Mountain View and Patras engineering and product management teams

• Chris Koopmans
• Joel Brand
• Kannan Parthasarathy
• Nick Stavrakos
• Konstantinos Tsolakas
• George Tsolis
• Paris Zafiris

Worldwide Customer Support

• Warren Simpson
• Tony Gambacorta
• Bill Hamlin

I would like to extend my sincere personal thanks to all of these individuals for their efforts.

Sharing the Excitement
In closing, I would like to share my feedback to the China team:

Michael,

Congratulations to you and the entire Bytemobile China team and to ASB. This was indeed a very challenging and hard fought win and the effort put forth by all of you was tremendous. I am confident that this win marks the launch of many great successes for Bytemobile in China. Now we must work even harder to ensure that we capitalize on this opportunity and move quickly to keep our competitive advantage. You know that the support of the entire company is behind you, your team, and our partner.

I would like to offer my personal thanks to Chris [Koopmans] and his team as well. Their support has been exemplary.

John

The China Mobile Web Gateway win is an exciting milestone for Bytemobile and for the Asia-Pacific Region.

-John Cole

Tags: 3G, china mobile, content adaptation, mobile handsets, technological innovation, telecommunications industry, web fidelity suite

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 5:07 pm and is filed under content adaptation, mobile ecosystem, mobile internet, web fidelity suite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.