Trillion moves, what's done right?

Although it has been 7 years since I left China Mobile, the imprint engraved on my body is too heavy, so it is easy to have a sense of substitution when I see the report of China Mobile.

When I saw the news that China Mobile's revenue in 2023 would exceed one trillion yuan, although it was expected, it was still inevitable that I would be excited.

From 1994 to March 2017, I have grown together with China Mobile.

From the mobile communications bureau of a dozen people to the industry giant today, I have witnessed difficult choices from an inside perspective.

The impact of many of these decisions is not felt until years later.

Today, I will tell you a few key events in my memory to see how China Mobile managed to be unbeatable.

【Winning at scale】

In the early years, China's communications market was in short supply, government and enterprise integration, the main work of the local post and telecommunications departments was to carry out capacity building in accordance with technical standards, and the tariffs were uniformly set by the government, before the emergence of Unicom, in a state of complete lack of competition.

I was deeply involved in the work of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in formulating the principles and settlement standards for mobile phone billing, and at that time, the main body of tariff management was not the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, but the State Development Planning Commission.

At that time, the management of telecom tariffs was very strict, and prices could not rise or fall. When the competent department of the industry organizes a large-scale price inspection, the crime of reducing the price and giving preferential treatment without the permission of the price management department is equivalent to arbitrary price increase and arbitrary charges.

Later, China Unicom was established, and it also had to follow the billing principles formulated by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, but in terms of tariff standards, similar services were allowed to be 10% lower than the price of the telecommunications department.

However, when Unicom first started to expand its business, the 10% discount did not make any difference:

In the era when you have to rely on the relationship to find the director to approve the strips, you don't have to consider the price factor at all.

However, with the rapid expansion of the scale of mobile phones, the demand relationship has undergone a qualitative change, and China Unicom has posed a threat to the mobile communication business of the telecommunications bureau.

Due to the very strict management of telecom tariffs, pressure began to appear in some provinces, and Unicom used the low-price policy to seize the market, which put us in a dilemma: should we implement the national policy in a proper manner and let Unicom grow? Or should we risk being criticized by the government departments and fight a price war with Unicom?

For this topic, some leaders of the mobile communication market who are still under the wings of telecom held a seminar in Jiangxi, and the final decision of the meeting was: follow the law of market-oriented competition, respond to the battle with price reductions in areas where Unicom's business is better, continue to expand its scale, and curb the development momentum of Unicom.

At that time, it was the beginning of the 2G era, and the number of GSM users in the country was only one million. Now that I think about it, if China Unicom could develop enough customers in some key areas at that time, morale would have grown and gone, and the development pattern of mobile communications might have been different.

However, the decision-making at that time was decisive and clear, and after unifying the thinking, each performed its own duties and rolled up its sleeves and worked hard, so that Unicom's GSM was at an all-round disadvantage in the competition and was suppressed for a long time.

The communication industry is an industry with a very high degree of standardization, and when telecom operators choose the same communication standard, it seems to be completely homogeneous competition.

With the same technical standards and the same suppliers operating in the same region, large-scale operators can spread their operating costs thinner and be more profitable.

Therefore, China Mobile has grasped the opportunity of industrial development, ensured the leading position of market share, and desperately expanded its scale, based on this, it is often in a dominant position in the competition.

Another strategic decision of China Mobile related to the success of scale is the attitude towards the village.

At the beginning of this century, the Ministry of Information Industry launched a project to connect villages with telephones, and plans to have at least 95 percent of administrative villages open telephones by the end of 2005.

At that time, there were many objections to this kind of policy requirement with a strong color of universal service, especially the mainstream opinion of the capital market was that investing in construction in these places where the cost could not be recovered was an act that violated the laws of the market and was not conducive to the development of telecom operators.

However, after careful consideration, China Mobile proposed to actively participate in the village-to-village project and take the initiative to cover the mobile communication network to the vast number of villages.

On this issue, Wang Jianzhou, then chairman of China Mobile, explained to overseas investors:

Urban coverage has been basically saturated, and the vast rural areas have been neglected due to insufficient consumption capacity, if through scale and technological advantages, with the help of national support, reduce the cost of coverage in rural and remote areas, and develop users in these areas, it is beneficial to the overall development of the industry.

In the end, China Mobile undertook the task of building more than half of the country's villages, so as to establish an unshakable advantage of full coverage and wide coverage.

Later, the high-speed mobile communication network drove the development of the mobile Internet industry, and a large number of rural customers were also chatting about WeChat and watching videos.

【Anti-customer-oriented】

The previous example is a judgment and decision made in accordance with the laws of the industry when China Mobile can make active choices. In the more than 20 years of development, there are times when we encounter difficulties, so we must look for opportunities in technology, market, management and other aspects, make use of our strengths and avoid weaknesses, and actively explore ways to solve problems.

From the perspective of communication technology, the best communication standard in the 2G era is CDMA.

According to the idea of the post and telecommunications department at that time, it wanted to wait for the maturity of CDMA before large-scale development, but when it saw that China Unicom began to use GSM to build a network, in order to seize the opportunity, it had to immediately launch GSM.

The fascination of domestic technical experts with the advancement of CDMA has continued into the new century.

At that time, in accordance with the requirements of the central government, the 133 Great Wall test network should be converted to civilian use.

China Unicom believes that this is a good opportunity to use technology to turn around, so it strives for it, and finally gets the right to build and operate the CDMA network.

Since then, China Unicom has carried out a series of well-planned actions around CDMA, including highlighting the technological advancement of CDMA, focusing on green radiation-free and high-end image in market promotion, and also developing dual-mode mobile phones called "world style", as well as marketing methods such as giving mobile phones to users who access the network.

The purpose of these measures is to use CDMA to seize the high-end market, and at the same time use China Unicom's GSM to hit the low-end market, so that China Mobile's GSM is in a passive position of being attacked from both sides.

In order to solve this passive situation, colleagues at the market mouth took great pains and finally came to the conclusion:

The high-end market can not be lost, no matter how much it costs, as long as the CDMA can hit the low-end market, you can change the passive to the active.

In the following six months, the mobile group and the provincial company worked together to devote most of their attention to the competition for high-end customers with China Unicom's CDMA, which greatly slowed down the growth rate of CDMA users.

In the end, in order to ensure that the CDMA network has better operating results, China Unicom had to reduce prices to expand the scale of customers.

This approach is contradictory to the previous high-end strategy, and at the implementation level, there are more situations that are contrary to the strategy.

So it didn't take long for Unicom's CDMA and GSM to fall into the dilemma of "fighting left and right", and the biggest crisis encountered by China Mobile after its establishment was safely passed.

In January 2009, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially issued three 3G licenses to three telecom operators. Among them, China Mobile has obtained the TD-SCDMA license, China Telecom has obtained the CDMA2000 license, and China Unicom has obtained the WCDMA license, and the mobile communication competition has entered a new stage.

Whether it is the advancement of technology or the maturity of the industry, objectively speaking, China Mobile has obtained the worst license. This kind of overall backward technology situation is the first time that China Mobile has encountered it.

So there is such a voice inside: the license is shoehorned by the state, it is normal to not be able to do it, we don't need to risk too much investment in immature technology, and there is no need to work so hard, and when the performance declines, find the competent department to sell and cry, and strive to get the favorite WCDMA license to come, and then start to work hard.

In the general public, this kind of "waiting to be relied on" is the norm of state-owned enterprises, but at that time, the mainstream of China Mobile did not think so, and there was no negative response in action.

Since we are at a technological disadvantage, we should use market power and innovation to regain our advantages.

It is against this background that wireless local calls and WLANs are developed.

The former is the application of wireless communication in fixed communication scenarios, which is somewhat similar to the 5G FWA that is currently popular in North America;

The latter is an attempt to use WiFi networking to supplement the shortcomings of TD users' poor Internet access.

These two businesses are often ridiculed in the industry, but they do provide a weapon for market-level persistence, and without these businesses to support them, the consequences are unimaginable.

Among the three 3G licenses, WCDMA has a clear advantage in maturity, so China Unicom is the main opponent.

At that time, China Unicom held high the banner of centralization, carried out unified operation of the whole network, and used advanced Internet concepts to give full play to the advantages of WCDMA, the most classic case of which is the cooperation with Apple mobile phones, which can be described as strong and strong, and the momentum is like a rainbow.

Based on our long-term understanding of the characteristics of the telecom operator industry, we believe that the integrated operation of the whole network does have many advantages, such as:

The Group can grasp the real-time data of business and operation to provide effective support for centralized decision-making;

Concentrate on efficient business innovation to avoid the waste of resources in silos;

The policy is implemented downwards quickly and unified, and it can be promoted across the network at one point online.

But there are two sides to everything, and these strengths may also be counterproductive. Like what:

In addition to standardized data statistics, it is difficult for the group to accurately understand the complex competition situation and the actual situation of business development in various places.

The unified operation of the whole group will also weaken the enthusiasm and innovation ability of the local government, and the business innovation and operation needs carried out according to the actual situation are likely to be filtered when the needs of the whole network are sorted out;

The centralized mode of the whole network system is unified, and the top-down active requirements can be quickly realized, but the passive business requirements will be developed and iterated for a long time.

In other words, when centralized control is adopted, it is easy to show the form of "good at attacking but not good at defending".

Therefore, at the market level, the mobile response is to mobilize the enthusiasm and initiative of the grassroots, increase the authorization to provinces, cities and even counties, in order to speed up the response to grassroots demand investment sources, encourage the use of sparrow warfare, dexterous kraft candy and opponents to slow down the decline in market share as much as possible.

In March 2012, with the efforts of Zhejiang Mobile, the 4G trial network was opened, which allowed customers to see hope and the dawn of victory within China Mobile before more users were lost.

【Industrial Revitalization】

The original mobile phone billing rule was to charge users a monthly fee, on top of which they were charged for two-way calls per minute.

Later, in order to expand customer development business, China Mobile launched the "Shenzhou Line", which adopted the billing principle of not charging monthly fees, but the call rate was more expensive.

The first to support the business of Shenzhou Bank is the mobile intelligent network.

The concept and products of intelligent networks first appeared in fixed communication networks. The telephone booths that used to be all over the streets and alleys, and the magnetic stripe phone cards that can be sold on the streets and alleys, are all counted as smart network services.

In terms of technical principles, the intelligent network can be understood as a plug-in on the communication equipment, on the basis of the traditional communication control, with software as the main body to support various telecom value-added services, and at the same time can also provide billing, control and other capabilities, forming the communication industry said "intelligent service" or "intelligent network business".

During a trip to Europe, we were interested in the prepaid service of European operators: users recharge first and then make calls, and the phone bill is immediately interrupted when the call bill is deducted, which is very suitable for temporary mobile communication needs such as travel, and there will be no arrears.

Supporting this kind of "mobile prepaid service" is the mobile intelligent network, which is the introduction of intelligent network functional entities in the mobile network to realize the intelligent control of mobile calls.

After returning to China, we actively promoted the introduction of mobile intelligent networks in China Mobile's network, and among many vendors and technical solutions, there were finally two candidates left: Siemens and Huawei.

At that time, the reason for choosing Siemens was very good: the technology was mature, there were rich practical cases, and it could give us a lot of guidance and help in the business aspect, which helped to quickly launch the business.

In the end, China Mobile chose Huawei.

When we discussed with Huawei, Huawei said that although it was inexperienced, it was willing to innovate with China Mobile and make an intelligent network system with Chinese characteristics.

Later, the story that everyone knows is that with the help of the development of prepaid business, China Mobile's customer scale has reached a new level, and later Shenzhou Line has become the brand with the largest customer scale among the three major brands of China Mobile.

Later, the story that everyone didn't know was that the joint innovation bet between Huawei and China Mobile won the mobile intelligent network, and the massive orders brought about by the great development of the prepaid business were almost exclusively enjoyed by Huawei. The money earned by relying on mobile intelligent networks supported Huawei to survive the cold winter of the IT industry in 2000.

Partnering with Huawei to co-innovate mobile intelligent networks is no easy task, and there are countless stories in between. But in terms of difficulty, compared with the later pull of the TD industry, that is not a thing.

From a technical point of view, although TDSCDMA is one of the three major 3G standards, the overall maturity of the industry is insufficient, and most of the traditional overseas equipment manufacturers do not pay attention to it and do not support it.

Equipment manufacturers that support TD lack experience in large-scale applications and do not fully consider construction scenarios, so they have suffered a lot in construction adaptation.

Here's an example. When building a station in a coastal city, it was found that the panel of the base station was too wide to meet the requirements of typhoon resistance. In the end, the construction crew came up with a way to punch holes in the panels, which could not only breathe in the air, but also maintain communication capabilities.

Such a problem is easy to solve, and the equipment will consider the typhoon factor in the next generation of products, and the new equipment will not have such a problem. What's even more troublesome is that the manufacturer doesn't care about your needs at all and doesn't even give you a chance.

Compared with communication equipment, TD-supporting terminal manufacturers are less active, and their main R&D resources are invested in the world's most popular WCDMA, believing that TD will not succeed.

The time that made me feel the most congested, the top leader and the vice president in charge of China Mobile met with the president of Nokia, and the world's largest operator actively expressed his desire for Nokia to develop TD mobile phones.

As a result, the other party arrogantly said that he could reluctantly make it difficult.

As a result, among the hundreds of new mobile phones released by Nokia after that, only one was a TD mobile phone.

When there is no way out, you can only rely on your own exploration, and when you have hope, lead everyone to walk together.

On the one hand, China Mobile lures the industrial chain, and on the other hand, urges its own terminal companies to engage in independent research and development.

In the cold eyes, ridicule and wait-and-see of the industry, China Mobile's own brand of TD mobile phone was made, and later successfully hit the price to the level of 1,000 yuan machine.

The onlookers saw the determination and business opportunities, and they left one after another.

China Mobile also reciprocated these supporters, and the industrial chain successfully turned around.

The TD terminal industry chain has made great progress, and China Mobile has sounded the 4G charge.

The industry saw the huge business potential, Cook came to China to announce Apple's support for TD, Qualcomm made a chip to support multi-mode mobile phones, and since then, the situation of terminal constraints has been reversed.

Is it costly?

It's huge.

Is it worth it for all this effort?

In hindsight: it's worth it.

In the 4G era, China Mobile has become a leader again, working with the industrial chain independently cultivated in the 3G era to explore the development of high-speed mobile data communication networks, and the overall industrial scale and advantages of the communication industry have continued to 5G, and even in the face of sanctions and blockades from Western countries, they are still full of confidence.

It's a tough road. But if you know that this is the right path, you can only grit your teeth and go on.

As we walked, there were more and more like-minded people, and when there were more people in the same company, there was a road, and this road eventually became a broad road.