“The Flexibility and Willingness to Support Us with Whatever We Need”

An Interview with Telenor Hungary CTO József J. Huszlicska

With nearly 3.5 million subscribers at the end of June 2011, Telenor Hungary is the second largest operator in Hungary. In August 2010, they began a five-year project to modernize their network. The project involves the swap-over of 4504 sites and installation of 1683 new green sites around the country. There will be 250 LTE sites. ZTE was selected as the sole vendor for the network upgrade. By November 21, 2011, more than 2000 sites had been successfully swapped over, which means that high-speed data services (branded Telenor Hipernet) are now available throughout greater Budapest. József J. Huszlicska, chief technical officer of Telenor Hungary, received our interview in the bright meeting room at Telenor Hungary’s Budapest headquarters. He shared his impressions of ZTE.

Q: You have been cooperating with ZTE for several years. What's your impression of ZTE? What do you admire the most?

A: I admire the local staff here. They are eager to support us, and want to build a relationship with us. The local cooperation is very good, and I can even say that cooperation with ZTE headquarters and research department is quite smooth.

In terms of response and problem solving, ZTE is extremely flexible and fast. We have compared ZTE with other suppliers, especially European suppliers. If we want improvements or changes made in the working model or in the operational system, it usually takes one day for ZTE to agree and approve. It takes a night to develop it—sometimes it might take a few weeks—but ZTE is extremely flexible.

If we make the same requests of some of the other suppliers, they say OK, we understand your issue now. Then, it might take them four months to approve the changes and incorporate them into the next release or the release after that. Six or twelve months down the track we get this improvement.

What I admire most is the cooperation from ZTE—the flexibility and willingness to support us with whatever we need. At the same time I think there is room for improvement of project delivery. We have a common goal to make this project successful.

Q: ZTE CEO Shi Lirong said, “I feel happiest when our customers’ capabilities are upgraded and their profits are increased because of cooperation with us. This makes me happier than knowing we were awarded a new contract.” What do you think of this statement?

A: I like very much what Shi Lirong said because it is very important that ZTE understands our goals and helps us achieve them. How does this apply to Telenor Hungary? Very simply, one year ago another company was our main 3G supplier, today it is ZTE.

In 2010, if we wanted to give our users a better experience, we had to negotiate with them about how much to pay for better speed, more network capacity, and more features. Eventually, I always had to go to the board to prove that it was worth it to implement these things. The contract with ZTE today truly supports Telenor Hungary. We can do basically everything we want.

Since you signed this contract in 2010, you have been focusing on delivering the best features and system as well as suggesting the best ways to satisfy the end customer. That is invaluable to us. It’s a big, big change. Now, we can be the leader in mobile Internet in Hungary because of our agreement. I think the contract structure and the way you cooperate with us support Shi Lirong’s statement.

Q: Telenor Hungary is the second largest operator in Hungary. How can ZTE help Telenor Hungary improve its market position?

A: We have a definite plan to be the favorite operator in Hungary. If you look at the capability of the three operators at the moment, nobody can beat us in mobile broadband. If you look at the three operators in Hungary Telenor, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and you are not blindly loyal but really look at the capability, Telenor is providing the best mobile Internet service in Hungary today. We have a good chance of being the leader in Hungary. Hungarian customers are also extremely loyal. Of people who may have joined T-Mobile or Telenor 20 years ago, or joined Vodafone 10 years ago, 90% would stay regardless of price, quality, or capability. But there’s still 10% to 20% who are more rational. We really hope to serve some part of the market that is not served today, so we try to get them in and make them join us rather than our competitors.

Q: What do you think about ZTE’s technology?

A: I can’t evaluate your technology in deep technical terms, but I know what you are delivering, your capabilities, and your roadmap. A few years ago when I was in Ukraine, I heard that part of the industry in Europe was complaining that some Chinese vendors were far behind the Europeans in terms of 3G and future technology and that Chinese vendors were copying European ideas. Chinese vendors actually learned from the Europeans, not copied them. From my experience, nobody can say that the Chinese vendors are now copying European ideas. Actually, many people would say that now the Europeans are catching up with Chinese vendors.

So your technology fulfills the highest expectations worldwide.

Q: What would you like to say to our nearly 500 operators and customers?

A: We recently participated in ZTE friendly user community conference, which was very successful. I suggest ZTE learn more from angry users, which is more useful than learning from friendly users.

I suggest that fellow operators and clients support more ZTE user groups managed by operators rather than ZTE. These communities should be operator-focused, not supplier-focused. ZTE can get the complaints, suggestions and reports from the operators, but user communities should be run by us, the operators.