Within the sometimes nerdy world of telecoms, it was soon nicknamed the Great Wall of China.
I refer to the exhibition stand at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where Huawei, a previously relatively obscure Chinese telecoms manufacturer whose name even industry insiders still struggled to pronounce, first unambiguously hoisted its flag on the western scene.
Seemingly, it had bought up around a third of the exhibition centre’s entire available floor space. Huawei had well and truly arrived.
That was 2012, but in fact, the company had been active in European markets from well before then...