Explainer | How Huawei went from small-time trader in Shenzhen to world’s biggest telecoms equipment supplier

Before 2004, few mobile network operators in Europe had heard of Huawei Technologies, much less considered it a potential supplier. But that changed after Richard Yu Chengdong, who now heads Huawei’s consumer business, proved to a small Dutch operator the lengths to which the Chinese company was willing to go to serve its customers.

Back then, Telfort was the smallest of four cellular communications providers in the Netherlands. Daunted by the prevailing market prices to deploy a 3G network, the company entered talks with Huawei, then a scrappy upstart with just a handful of employees in Europe. Telfort also had another potentially bigger problem – it did not have the space to house the necessary equipment at its base stations.

Huawei, which was desperate to break into the European market, sprang into action. Yu, who was vice-president of wireless networks then, cancelled all of his appointments and worked with Huawei’s small team in Europe and engineers back in China to devise a solution. Within a week, they came up with one – a base station that could be deployed in two parts, required little space to install and was cheaper to run.

Telfort was impressed. Within months the deal for a 10-year contract worth 230 million euros was sealed and Huawei was on the map. The next year, it won contracts from BT Group, formerly British Telecom, and became a supplier to Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest mobile carriers.

“Huawei was not dominant in China at the time, they were well-positioned with customers like China Mobile but they said that if you want more business in China then you need to show us you’re an international company,” Stefan Scheuerle, a former Huawei sales executive who worked on the Telfort deal, said in an interview.