Chapter 86: Is Tengda Going to Commit Suicide?

The next few hours went much more smoothly. As the servers and the power grid were expanded, the entire service finally became fully stable.

Although quite a few people did leave at first, usage gradually recovered afterward, and the number of people online at the same time kept climbing. By seven in the evening, as more people found themselves free, the peak concurrent users for the night climbed past 2.48 million, almost reaching 2.5 million.

But Huang He’s jinx had its effect.

At 7:18 that night, just as the 2.48 million peak was reached, the network equipment at Wenzhou Telecom was overwhelmed by the massive traffic and completely crashed. The entire Wenzhou region had to reboot its network, and this time the outage could not be fixed within twenty minutes. Wenzhou Telecom did not complete repairs until some twelve hours later, turning Huang He’s face green with frustration.

In theory, simply rebooting the equipment would have taken only a little over ten minutes. But by seven in the evening, everyone had already gone home; they would have to wait until work resumed the next day.

So they waited all the way until around nine the next morning before the network finally came back. Something that would have been utterly impossible in 2021 was perfectly ordinary in 2001, nothing worth being surprised about.

Only poor OO was unlucky: just as it had reached the summit of its life, it was forced into silence for half a day.

And this situation had absolutely nothing to do with the pitiful Huang He. Whether he was being dim-witted or not, he had no way of deciding anything for Wenzhou Telecom.

Still, for Leng Zhimeng and Chen Shoufu’s team, it was a blessing. During that day, aside from a handful of maintenance staff, the team that had worked overtime for more than a week and slept less than four hours a night finally got half a day to sleep.

This also confirmed for Huang He once more that within a year, he truly needed to set up a dedicated workplace designed specifically for an internet company. Otherwise, continuing to borrow space from the leather factory’s plant simply would not keep up with demand.

But the location had to be, as Leng Zhimeng had said, in a cool mountainous area that would make heat dissipation easier. At the same time, the network there had to be sufficiently developed, and the connection speed had to be able to bear the company’s own demands. Such conditions were extremely hard to find. At present, no such place existed anywhere in all of China; they could only search for a suitable site around the outskirts of a city.

But those were matters for the future. Right now, the urgent task was to find Wenzhou Telecom and get them to find a way to increase network capacity. Otherwise, if Huang He’s own systems were fine but he ended up being dragged down by the telecom company, that would be truly infuriating.

Unfortunately, the person Huang He sent to Wenzhou Telecom came back to report that things had not gone smoothly. After Huang He’s subordinate had introduced himself, before even explaining the problem, the person in charge at Wenzhou Telecom actually pointed at his head and cursed him out, saying they were far too overbearing. One company had taken up eighty percent of Wenzhou’s network traffic, causing their network to collapse. Not only had they been forced to work through the night making emergency repairs, they had also been harshly reprimanded by their superiors.

You worked overtime to repair it at night?

Huang He could only stare in bewilderment.

In the end, the person in charge declared that Jiangnan Computer could no longer be so domineering. The traffic it consumed could not exceed the upper limit they had set, or Wenzhou Telecom would directly throttle them.

Huang He was dumbfounded by Wenzhou Telecom’s response. Was this the attitude a telecom company had toward an internet company? Was there really such an outrageous telecom firm in this world, one that took the initiative to throttle an internet business?

Besides, he paid Wenzhou Telecom as much as six hundred thousand yuan a month in network service fees. And after spending six hundred thousand, he had bought himself a grandfather who sat on his neck?

In truth, this was Huang He’s mistake. He could not simply impose the attitude of a 2021 network operator toward an internet company onto China Telecom in 2001.

After all, the telecom industry in China had not yet been reformed. China Telecom was still the one and only network operator in the country. If you did not use their service, there was no second choice. And given the difference between their status and that of a private company, a private firm like his had no business making noise in front of them.

Forget paying six hundred thousand a month. Even if he paid six million, they would not care in the slightest. They did not depend on him to make a living.

So Wenzhou Telecom’s attitude was, in fact, perfectly normal.

Huang He was furious and speechless over the situation. Even more exasperating was the fact that he did not dare to lose his temper in front of Wenzhou Telecom. If Wenzhou Telecom cut off his network, then the investment of several hundred million yuan would go up in smoke.

China’s telecom system was one unified whole. Huang He really could not strut around as if he owned the place.

So Huang He immediately sent Long Xue into action, finding a way to pay a visit to Wenzhou Telecom and the higher-ups above them. Using methods that could not be described too closely, she cajoled and coaxed them into giving up the wretched throttling restriction, while also promising investment to improve network quality and the like.

In this way, the matter was settled. Yet Huang He still felt as though he had swallowed filth, and for the first time the idea of moving out of Wenzhou appeared in his mind.

Of course, that was all for later. At least within the coming year, Huang He was not going anywhere. Nor did he have the energy to be angry at those people any longer. Right now, all his attention was fixed on OO’s backend data.

Although it had suffered three disastrous network incidents in succession, making it impossible for the previous peak of 2.48 million concurrent users to return in the short term, OO still maintained an average of around one million concurrent users, while the number of active accounts also climbed to roughly 4.8 million. This left everyone at OO exceedingly excited, for it meant that OO’s campaign had been a complete success. Not only had it successfully broken through the blockade that had followed the rise of Quick Messenger Pigeon, it had also taken OO’s data and strength to a higher level. It was a great victory.

But there were also those who held a pessimistic view. They said that these numbers only existed because QQ did not yet have a voice function. Once QQ acquired voice as well, then, just like the old Pigeon Messenger before it, it would instantly snatch away the users gathered by OO’s voice feature.

“Don’t be so pessimistic. Voice is not something that can be turned around quickly. Even if QQ has strong technical capability, it will still take them at least two months to bring out QQ Voice!” Chen Shoufu encouraged his subordinates in the face of those gloomy thoughts. “And if we have these two months, we can turn these active users into our loyal users. By then, we will be able to stand on equal footing with QQ!”

What Chen Shoufu said made perfect sense, if QQ really needed more than two months to produce QQ Voice.

But in fact, just as Chen Shoufu finished speaking, one of his subordinates cried out, “Bad news, QQ has released an announcement. Their QQ Voice feature will begin internal testing tomorrow and will be opened to all users!”

“What!” Chen Shoufu sprang to his feet at once and rushed to QQ’s official website, where he confirmed this astonishing news. The relevant announcement was hanging right on the most conspicuous part of the homepage, and even the installation package for the brand-new version was already available for download.

“I’m going to find Big Sister!” Chen Shoufu grabbed this shocking news and went to look for Leng Zhimeng. Unexpectedly, Huang He was also in Leng Zhimeng’s office.

“Chairman, Big Sister, this is bad. QQ actually...”

“No need to say more. I’ve already seen QQ’s announcement. But that little Ma really does deserve his title as the chosen one. He pulled QQ Voice out in just three days. I can’t help wondering whether he might be a transmigrator,” Huang He said with a smile.

“What does transmigrator mean?” Chen Shoufu muttered under his breath. But that was not important. What mattered was that Huang He still wore a smile on his face, as though QQ’s announcement was not bad news at all, but rather a tremendous piece of good fortune.

“Chairman, have you already thought of a plan to deal with them?” Chen Shoufu recalled the many wildly imaginative strategies Huang He had used before to guide OO through crisis after crisis, and could not help wondering whether this time too he had come up with the same kind of plan.

“No, we are not moving, and we do not need any plan at all!” Huang He shook his head, then, together with Leng Zhimeng, curved his lips into a smile. “If Tengda were really going to launch QQ Voice two months from now, I’d even feel a little regretful, as though I’d missed the chance to crush Tengda completely.”

“But since they’re going to launch it so quickly, tomorrow of all times, then they deserve what’s coming to them. This time, we don’t need to do anything. Tengda will destroy itself!”

“Tengda destroying itself? How could that be?” Chen Shoufu’s face was filled with doubt, though he did not dare say it aloud. All he could do was wait, hoping for the self-destruction of the Tengda that Huang He spoke of.