Many years ago, I heard such a saying: first-class enterprises do standards, second-rate enterprises do brands, and third-rate enterprises do products.
I have been in the communication industry for a long time, experienced the development process of mobile communication technology standards, and realized that many things are not so mysterious, and even due to the emergence of some accidental factors, the industry has come to what it is today.
1st Generation: Analog Mobile Phone System (6)
As mentioned above, a sentence from the leader started the construction of the national mobile phone billing and settlement center.
At this time, I had been in charge of billing for less than 1 month, so I was inexperienced and knew nothing.
So, the ignorant young man who was only 23 years old began to overcome obstacles and do things with the attitude of the ignorant and fearless.
[From chaos to order]
The national roaming billing and settlement system, which sounds lofty, now seems to be a very simple system, with only two basic functions:
The first is the transmission of roaming CDRs. The 31 provincial billing centers use dial-up modem to transmit the data files to the headquarters, and the headquarters verifies the bills, and then sends the qualified bills to the provinces in the form of documents.
The second is to form a roaming statement. According to the statistical results of the call list, the headquarters forms a settlement statement between 31 provinces, and sends it to the provincial company for reconciliation at the same time, and the data is handed over to the Finance Department of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and the corresponding fund transfer is completed in the financial operation of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to the provincial post and telecommunications administrations.
Here's an episode. At that time, my colleagues were busy with their own work, and I was working on a project for the first time, so I didn't understand it at all, and I made a lot of jokes.
I thought that 1.5 million was the upper limit of the project's cost, and in the end the total price was 1.44 million, I was full of joy, but I was told that the budget was exceeded. Because in addition to the project, the project budget also includes fees and taxes for the design institute. And when I was nervous and reported to the leader, thinking that I would be dissed, I was told that this was a normal phenomenon, and it was not too much, so it was not a problem.
There is also the fact that I thought that the project period was unchangeable, and promised that it must be completed in three months, so I worked overtime according to the manufacturer's head, signing the contract from December 15, 95 to accepting it on March 14, 96, exactly three months. And then I was told: in fact, it is normal for the project to be delayed, especially this kind of new thing that no one has ever done, and it is a miracle that it can be completed on time.
Originally, I thought that the rules and standards had already been issued, and the call list documents between the provinces had been passed for a long time, and the documents that came up should be standardized, and the content in them should also be standard. But when the system went live on schedule and I saw the first batch of files that were actually uploaded, I was really dumbfounded.
There are a lot of file name errors visible to the naked eye, and the content filling in the bill is even more non-standard, and it is difficult to imagine how the previous settlement system worked.
I still remember that in the first month, the proportion of all CDR documents returned was as high as 70%, and half of the documents that were accepted were more than 50% wrong. In terms of what can be used for normal settlement, it is less than 10% of the total amount of a single order.
In this case, we can only calm down and solve the problem one by one: some are problems with the provincial billing procedure, some are errors in the provincial settlement conversion, and some are caused by improper operation in the transmission process. And the most embarrassing thing is to discuss with the province for a long time, and find that it is the program error in the headquarters system, even if it will not be directly ridiculed by the other party, but the shame in my heart, I still remember.
Seeing that the things I was responsible for were so chaotic, the leaders were quite patient and responsible, did not reprimand me for being naïve, nor did they replace me, but quickly added two assistants to me, and then tried to make up for me when assigning new graduates.
When newcomers come, there is no systematic division of labor, just to break down many problems and solve them one by one. Within a few months, the system of the headquarters was stabilized, the procedures of the provinces were also corrected, the call list files were uploaded and distributed in an orderly manner, and the settlement reports were submitted as scheduled. Seeing the settlement amount from millions, tens of millions, to more than 100 million, my heart is full of a sense of achievement.
Now that I think about it, I am really afraid: if the mobile billing and settlement center does not rush ahead, or the pace of construction is slow, and when the roaming business breaks out, the settlement system has not yet operated stably, how much negative impact will it have on business development?
Perhaps it is precisely because this battle has not dropped the chain that in the process of billing and business support development in the future, when encountering various problems, they will basically get the trust and help of the leaders.
After this battle, my self-confidence has increased a lot, and I am more proactive in promoting work in the field I am responsible for. In fact, it's not just me, the Mobile Communications Bureau, like many start-up companies, has a large number of young people growing up in battle, using individual efforts to fill in various deficiencies and deficiencies, and making progress together with the company.
[Summary of the first generation]
The original intention of writing this series was to organize the evolution of mobile communications and recall the role of technical standards in each iteration of technology. But without paying attention, the first part of the article was filled with six 15,000-word essays, which became my memory of the days of analog mobile phones.
In fact, I wrote so much, just to let the people in the industry who are engaged in mobile communication work understand that in the era of unsound standards, unstable technology, lack of operational experience and complete fragmentation, mobile communication is a difficult start, and it can also burst out a lot of wisdom sparks.
This is a historic opportunity that cannot be replicated.
The analog mobile phone system, the first generation in the history of mobile communications, was originally intended to solve the problem that users could make calls on the move.
The invention and application of cellular technology has opened the channel for the large-scale development of mobile communications.
In the initial stage of the industry, different manufacturers and various systems of various systems are surging, each taking its own path.
At this time, there was no unified standard, and similar to today's IT industry and Internet industry, each vendor has its own system.
However, mobile phones have roaming services, and the realization of roaming requires interconnection between different systems, or even networking. As a result, the development model of the communication industry was finally changed.
When China introduced analog mobile phone systems, there were two vendors, so the problems encountered in developing roaming services were more complicated.
In the absence of technical standards and lack of business experience, the handling of problems is accidental, and when the problems are universal, systematic solutions should be sought. If you go too much, you will form a fixed way out.
The construction and operation of the billing and settlement center is also like this: at the beginning, it is just to solve specific problems, but when the problems accumulate to a certain extent, it is necessary to design a complete set of systems that can automate the processing of most of the business, and then manually intervene to deal with the remaining small number of special problems or new problems.
Looking back on the development process of the first generation of mobile communications, there is also a very important experience: to implement standards, there must be a "gripper".
The technical standards of mobile phone networking are verified in the process of interconnection. If the standard is not strictly enforced, the roaming is unsuccessful, and the phone cannot be connected, it is necessary to find the responsible party and ask the responsible party to improve.
Similarly, the standard release of roaming settlement documents and bills is very poor, but when the headquarters has a system to verify and judge the bills of each province from the perspective of the center, those who do not meet the standards will not get roaming charges, so they will urge the provinces to modify the format correctly as soon as possible.
As the saying goes, what is bought is not as good as what is sold. In fact, in the initial stage, the seller is also a grass team, not smarter than the buyer.
But after a long time and more customers, the seller will encounter more problems than independent individual customers, and the conditions, ability and experience will become more savvy.
Starting with the next article in this series, I will introduce the pinnacle of the mobile communication voice era: 2G.
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