Telcos need more network capacity to improve QOS-Huawei
In this interview, Senior Marketing Manager, Consumer Business, Huawei Nigeria, Olaonipekun Okunowo, speaks on issues in the nation’s telecommunication sector.
How do you address public perception of Huawei as a Chinese company with low capacity for quality? Huawei globally is a limited company not a public liability company till now as well, the firm has a whole lots of successes. The global fortunes rating for instance, Huawei is classified as one of the global 500 fortune companies. Also, it is one of the top 100 brands of all times in the world and first Chinese brand to be number one mobile phone company in China.
This has never happened before. So, as proud as the Chinese people are about the brand, the Chinese government turns Huawei products as diplomatic gifts to diplomats who visit China to show that they are proud of the company.
We cannot rule out the fact that it is a Chinese company and that is started by saying Huawei is a native of China but a global citizen. If my origin is China, that doesn’t mean that my corporate culture is Chinese, that doesn’t mean that I fall within the classes of companies that are doing the irregular.
Now, Huawei over the years has played in the global stage and the argument that any company that comes out of China lacks capacity for quality will be wrong for a company that has become the global number one in anything it does because that is to proved that it does right in three folds what companies that come outside of China are doing to get to that state.
Huawei has actually over the years paid its dues and that is why people need to change that perception that it is a Chinese brand and we will continue to engage the people to convince them that Huawei is just a native of China but it’s products and services are of global standards
Before Huawei came to Nigeria, the telecommunications players at that time would have gone round to look for the best global ICT company that could give them the best solutions before they came back to Huawei.
The company is doing well in Europe, America, South Pacific, South Africa and so on which shows that the firm has been able to cross the Rubicon of tag line of inferior brands and tag line of inferior nation about how people see it and that perception is proven wrong through its product and services.
As a back end network provider for most world giants telecoms companies, what is your take on the assertion that low standard telecommunications equipment is responsible for low quality of services in Nigeria?
Huawei was not the sole company providing back end service when it came into Nigeria because in telecoms, you can’t give everything to one company it has to be geographically shared to engender the right appeal.
When telecoms started in Nigeria, the quality we had then is not what we have now. It has really step up that today, low call drops, data working better than what is used to be in past when you used a data and you want open a website, you need to wait for a long time but today, you can do that within a few seconds on your phone that shows over time things are improving.
ICT is and evolving business in the past and till today people are talking about long term Evolution (LTE) technology also known as 4G but has Nigeria passed the rubicon of 2G and 3G penetration? I will say no, but there are some providers that are providing 4G services sitting on Huawei platform.
There is need to identify that being able to provide 4G, you need to be at certain location. We also put in it, the evolvement in technology as the equipment and demand increase, the evolvement come. One major thing that affects communication is bandwidth and you find out that when business started in Nigeria, many companies requested for certain bandwidth and discovered that they have huge subscriptions that created a lot of traffic and customers can’t even enjoy the quality.
So, this is not the fault of the back end provider but the capacity that is needed. A lot of telecommunication companies will notify subscribers that they will experience network difficulty because they are trying to expand or upgrade equipment this is what happens when and it is as simple when using a computer system asks the user to upgrade because the workload has expanded it has to be upgraded and in telecoms you cannot cheat it just last week, the Nigerian Communications Commission ( NCC) said 2million people have been added to Nigerian subscribers and the question is whether there is capacity to cater for them? More people are coming on board so, the onus lie on the operators not the back end provider to realise the need to expand continuously to absorb those new subscribers and that is more money actually.