• 
• 

Published on September 4, 2007

Victor Wang, Huawei's president and CEO for the Asia-Pacific, yesterday said the company was negotiating with CAT, although CAT had yet officially to notify the company of its decision to impose a fine.

Late last month, CAT's board decided to fine Huawei for its late delivery of the complete second phase of the roll-out of the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 1-x cellular network in 51 provinces.

CAT is waiting for its fine-calculation committee to propose the

final amount for the board's consideration next Tuesday. The contract stipulates that the fine be Bt90 million a day for the project's late delivery.

While on a visit to Thailand, Wang said the problem stemmed from different interpretations of the details of the contract, which stated Huawei had to deliver the second phase by this past January 26, while the complementary high-speed software would be completely installed in the network next year.

The company has proposed installing the complementary equipment free of charge.

But CAT interpreted the contract to mean the entire network had to be delivered in January of this year.

Wang declined to comment on how Huawei would react if CAT imposed a fine.

In 2005, Huawei quoted Bt7.2 billion to win the tender to roll out 1,600 base stations for the CDMA cellular network for CAT. The first and second phases each require the installation of 800 base stations.

Huawei did deliver the complete second phase to CAT by the January 26 deadline, but CAT views that the Chinese company has yet to install the software completely.

Sirivish Toomgum

 The Nation