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An on-site assignment could well be the most interesting aspect of the work culture of Huawei. I was delighted when my manager informed me that I would be required at a Huawei Installation site in Mauritius as soon as possible. The mission was the IOT (Inter-Operability-Testing) of the CNIP (Calling Name Identification Presentation) Service for Mauritius Telecom. With delight, there was also a slight apprehension of meeting the customer and about the work on a commercial site. But these were gone after a week of training and preparation for the onsite work in HTIPL (Huawei Technologies India Private Limited). And I was ready!

My first sight of Mauritius was from the Aircraft and it was a sight to behold! The sight was that of a beautiful, green landscape bordered by white sands, splashed gently by a turquoise sea. From the moment I landed, my predefined views about Mauritius changed. It was not a sleepy town as I had imagined, but in fact a developed country with the latest facilities, excellent roads and orderly cityscapes. The driver zoomed past the sceneries to take me to my Lodgings in Cyber Village, at a town called Ebene.

On the same day, I reported to Mr. Steven Ren Kai, Huawei Project Manager of TSD (Technical Support Division) for Mauritius Telecom Site and Mr. Ribbat Wanghonghui, Product Manager for Mauritius Telecom Site, who gave me a warm welcome, in Huawei Mauritius Office. They briefed me about the current situation on site and the technical challenges ahead of us. I already felt like a part of the onsite team.

The next morning, I got introduced to the local staff of Huawei Mauritius Office; they were very friendly right from the start. In the following days, I realized that friendliness is the main trait of all Mauritians. This trait of Mauritians and the friendly Chinese colleagues made the whole experience in Mauritius very pleasant. Huawei Mauritius has a sleek office in an impressive complex called Cyber Tower in Ebene.

The same day I went to the customer site, where Mr. Steven Ren Kai introduced me to the Customers Engineers from Cellplus and Mauritius Telecom and TSD Team Members. In due time, I was to learn that Mr. Steven Ren Kai was an expert in configuration of TELLIN System and possessed extraordinary skills in debugging the whole system from module level to network perspective. The TSD Team members too were highly skilled in their jobs. The place was really exciting as it was my first time to see the equipment of the TELLIN-System online at a commercial installation. The site is known as Orleans and is in the city of Port Louis, the Capital City of Mauritius. It is located in the picturesque campus of the Headquarters of Mauritius Police Force. Can things get any safer than this?

The transition for an R&D engineer like me, from the Research Labs in HTIPL to onsite Installation in Mauritius, almost amounts to a paradigm shift. The two environments described above are very different from each other. In R&D the stress is more on a good design of the system as a whole, down to the various units that make up the system. Here we are aware of the issue areas and are ready with fault isolation and the mitigation plans. Whereas in the onsite environment the stress is more on the clean and correct configuration and making the various modules interact to achieve the proper functioning of the system. When there is an issue on-site, the first step would be that of isolation of the fault, because in this case the fault could be in any module of the vast system; from the network and the system hardware down to the services, making the environment highly dynamic. This is where the problem-solving and analysis skills of an engineer come into play. These factors made my on-site work very exciting and demanding.

One also has to be extra careful before applying any changes to the online system and even when simple changes are made only during the low traffic times. The stress is given on proper backups before making any change to the system, as even a small negligence may bring the whole system down! On the site there were many occasions where I had to interact with the customer along with the TSD and also attend status meetings, which is quite rare for an R&D engineer. Also, it is necessary to be technically ready so as to answer any queries or need for explanations that are put forward by the customer. It is a unique learning experience to work with the customer engineers and the TSD whose perspective of the system is different from that of the R&D engineers; though the result for which each of them is working is the same. The deadlines given by the customer on the site are much stricter as every small progress may affect the whole project.

In R&D, engineers may not be able to completely appreciate the requirements from the customer perspective. It is only when on-site can an R&D engineer relate the requirements from the Development, Configuration, Customer and finally to the Market (End Users). Such knowledge can be used to gain more customer focus in the R&D Projects. For example, for the CNIP Service, it was required to provide a GUI (Graphical User Interface) in the SMAP (Service Management Access Point) for adding the subscriber names into the IN (Intelligent Network) Database. There was also provisioning of a set of scripts in the Service Package deliverable for the same purpose, only that these scripts can do the same job in large batches. The script enabled the subscriber data to be received from the customer database and automatically scheduled to be added in the Service Database. The beauty and the importance of these scripts (which was part of the requirements for the service) can be only realized on the site – where an engineer can actually see that there are millions of entries to be uploaded to the database, which can be conveniently and speedily done using the scripts. The GUI in the SMAP may be used to add and customize database entries in small numbers and also to give a user-friendly view of subscriber data in the database, to the operator.

CNIP (Calling Name Identification Presentation) is a Fixed Intelligent Network service through which the caller's name can be displayed on the callee's terminal. The CNIP service was completely designed, developed and tested in HTIPL (The Huawei-India Research Center, Bangalore). The IOT of the CNIP Service on the Huawei TELLIN System was planned with legacy Alcatel SSPs (Service Switching Points) of Mauritius Telecom. Generally, any IOT is a complex operation even with the cooperation from both parties involved. From the very beginning it was clear that we would get the least cooperation in regard to IOT from the SSP Vendors. Our teams, both in Mauritius and HTIPL were ready and looking forward to this challenge.

IOT was started with the study of the nuances of the Alcatel SSPs with respect to the service and realizing the interface with Huawei System. There were a few initial hurdles, but after overcoming them, we made sure that the progress was smooth. The TSD Team was impressed by the timeliness and the orderliness of releases, whether it was of the platform updates or the Service Releases that was delivered by my Team in HTIPL. Periodic progress reports were submitted to the customer, which were well appreciated. The customers, Mauritius Telecom, were very kind and supportive to the Huawei Onsite Team. They professionally executed all our requests for help or made clarifications needed throughout the testing and installation.

In due course, the moment that we were striving for did arrive. We achieved the first successful CNIP call through the Alcatel Switch on the test terminal on the Site. This was the first time that CNIP IOT was successfully completed on any Huawei site. The sense of achievement that my team and I felt at that point of time is absolutely inexpressible. The successful interfacing with the Alcatel SSP for Mauritius Telecom is another achievement in Huawei's long line of recent successes. Also the learning acquired in this site will be utilized in many commercial installations of Huawei, all over the world.

Mauritius as a tourist destination amazed me with extreme geographical and cultural heterogeneity packed into so small an area. Apart from the world famous white sand beaches, it also has some impressive mountains, lakes, forests and beautiful landscapes. Mauritius celebrates many colorful festivals and events throughout the year. Mauritius is a beautiful interplay of light, sky, sand, sea and rain. And of course, the best part of Mauritius is its people, who are the most friendly, kind and amiable.

During the time spent in Mauritius, I learnt that the country was undergoing a Telecom Revolution. Many new services like PPT (Prepaid Telephony), UAN (Universal Access Number), UPT (Universal Personal Telecommunication), PRM (Premium Rate Service), VOT (Tele-voting), and IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) were being tested and made ready for the market. Also there were 3G systems being tested with services like TV-on-Mobile and Video on Demand. A new telecom operator too had just entered, making the market more competitive. Newspapers, televisions, billboards and radio were full of advertisements and information regarding these new services. We must be proud that Huawei is playing a strategic role in shaping the Telecom Scenario of Mauritius.