Ready, Set, China! Millions of global companies have established operations in China, eager to take a slice of China’s growing pie. Many have come to learn that success doesn’t happen overnight in a country as complex as China; it’s a marathon that requires endurance and resourcefulness.

Telecommunications service providers see the potential of the world’s most populated nation, which has shown an appetite for networked and value added services. The massive global participation of multi-national companies in the Chinese economy continues to incent carriers from around the world to find innovative ways to serve their enterprise clients beyond their geographical scope and domain of expertise. China has become one of the world’s top destinations for enterprise expansion, yet the country is wrought with challenges to both enterprises and carriers. Diversity of the country, its location, heterogeneity across the expansive Chinese market and a plethora of regulations create an increasingly challenging business sphere.

China Telecom Americas’ research shows that enterprises doing business in China overwhelmingly consider reliable telecommunications services to be a priority. Carriers hoping to meet their clients’ needs in China must be prepared to deliver exceptional service. To avoid spending hundreds of millions of dollars building, deploying and managing the array of service options necessary to meet enterprise communication needs, carriers would be wise to partner with an incumbent when entering China.

China Telecom is China’s leading integrated communications services provider with majority market share for fixed-line services and the greatest global capacity to, within and from China. Recognized by industry analysts for its pioneering strategy of deploying CN2, the Next Generation Carrying Network built for business MPLS requirements, China Telecom continues to innovate and establish subsidiaries globally to provide better regional service and support. China Telecom Americas was established in 2002 to serve North and South America and currently counts some of the world’s largest companies and carriers among its valued customers.

“We are constantly adding capacity in and out of China because demand from our customers is growing. We were reselling another company’s services, and they were getting their capacity from China Telecom. Working directly with China Telecom Americas gives us circuits direct from China Telecom and puts margin on the bottom line.”

-Director of Commercial Carrier Management, US-based Global Communications Carrier

China Investment Remains Strong

Since the mid-1980s, China’s financial integration with the world economy has grown sharply. The country currently accounts for 40 percent of FDI to developing countries and is the largest recipient of FDI after the United States. China will also become one of the world’s biggest global investors by the end of this decade, with global offshore assets tripling from $6.4 trillion now to nearly $20 trillion by 2020. In an increasingly competitive world for FDI, the future for China remains bright. As more multinational companies realize the strategic importance of entering the Chinese market and establish operations in the country, they must connect people, applications and content as part of daily operations, and this is where China Telecom Americas serves as a bridge between nations.

National economies that were once slightly entangled are now permanently intertwined. China is the United States’ largest trading partner, accounting for more than 15% of US trade, according to US Census Data, and will account for thirty percent of the world’s growth through to 2017, based on global forecasts from the International Monetary Fund. Trade between China and Latin America has also grown significantly. According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, bilateral trade between China and Latin America expanded from $200 million annually in 1975 to $70.2 billion per year in 2006. By 2013, that figure had risen to $289 billion.

China’s Telecommunications Landscape is Vast and Growing

With a population of 1.38 billion and a land mass slightly larger than the United States, China owns the world’s largest fixed-line and mobile networks in terms of both network capacity and number of subscribers. By 2020, China’s telecom market will be four times larger than the US market . In terms of Internet users, China has surpassed the United States at over 700 million users and also holds the greatest number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide. Its consumers, households and business have caused a boom in e-commerce, with shopping, texting and gaming rapidly growing. This large-scale adoption of communications technology and services has allowed China’s telecom service industry to grow. According to a KPMG report, China is targeting 1.2 billion 3G/4G mobile users (85 percent penetration) by 2020, up from 325 million in June 2013.

Implications for Carriers

The massive telecommunications market presents significant opportunities for carriers and value added service providers, even if they lack infrastructure in China. In order to succeed, they must select an alliance partner that demonstrates a willingness and ability to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure and support services required to keep up with the explosive demand for telecommunications services resulting from unprecedented economic growth. MNCs want to streamline the number of vendors that they use for their global communications requirements. They typically want to acquire telecommunications services through vendors with whom they have existing relationships. Even if carriers’ clients have not already inquired about communications services in support of operations in China, carriers should ready themselves to serve clients’ business in China.

For carriers whose clients have already led them into China, it’s a perfect time to evaluate alternatives that provide the best mix of service coverage options, support, SLAs and overall value. In most cases, carriers are serving existing clients who are expanding into China, so a relationship of trust between them is already established. If the services provided in China do not meet customers’ expectations, the entire business relationship could be at stake. Thus, carriers need to make sure that they choose a partner with the strength and resources to support the quality of their own brand.

China Telecom Americas Fosters Successful Relationships with Carriers

If anyone knows what carriers need to successfully serve demanding enterprise customers in China, it’s China Telecom. China Telecom Americas, China Telecom’s subsidiary serving carriers and enterprise customers in North and South America, combines the experience of a world-class carrier, the expertise and strength of its parent, and a North American team to locally support its relationships with carriers and service providers doing business in Asia.

Delivering data communications solutions to clients in China can be challenging on many levels including:

• Overcoming a lack of knowledge about doing business in China’s expansive market;
• Finding a local partner that can reach into all of China;
• Choosing between the multitude of networking options;
• Dealing with language and time differences and;
• Writing contracts with terms that are acceptable to the carrier.

China Telecom Americas is a strong, reliable choice for telecommunications service providers seeking a world-class partner in Asia in order to support their brand and their clients’ requirements. China Telecom Americas offers the strongest SLAs for network performance of any carrier serving China and the program management team has delivered industry leading on-time installations 99% of the time. China Telecom Americas works on behalf of carriers and customers for network planning, implementation and operational support in the Americas, China and the rest of China Telecom’s global network coverage area. The company is Cisco certified and has close synergies with technology providers like Citrix, Juniper Networks and Equinix.

The company provides a range of enterprise services along with a set of carrier-specific offerings including China Transit Services (Figure 2), Internet Peering, Network Ethernet Leasing Service, Wholesale IPLC, Wholesale MPLS, Wholesale Voice and Managed Services in the company’s Internet Data Centers (IDCs). These services help carriers extend offerings under their own brand while leveraging the multi-billion dollar investment that China Telecom has made in global capacity and services.

Most important to carriers and value added service providers is China Telecom Americas’ ability to locally support their global objectives. Telecommunications service providers interviewed reported the following benefits received from China Telecom Americas:

• End-to-End Service Management – “We did not need to know what was happening behind the scenes to provision the circuits that were ordered for our customer or to deal with service issues when they arose. We just worked with the China Telecom Americas support team and they turned around and worked with the people in China in all hours of the night. They were like our advocate.”
• English Language Support – “When we have issues, we don’t have a language barrier standing in the way of resolution.”
• Local Presence – “My China Telecom Americas rep comes to the office to sit down and talk about what we need.”
• US-Based Contracts – “For us, writing contracts in the US is a lot easier than writing them under Chinese regulations and being able to pay in US dollars is key.”
• Better Margins – “Since we can now buy the circuits we need directly from China Telecom Americas, we can cut out the middleman and put money on the bottom line.”
• Best Service Level Agreements – “China Telecom Americas offered us out-of-the-box service level agreements that far exceeded what any other carrier could guarantee.”

“One of our largest clients came to us with the need to network 11 facilities in China together and provide a fast, reliable and secure connection back to the US for access to the financial and ERP systems located in Chicago. They have more than 800 people relying on this circuit and the operation would go down if the circuit fails. China Telecom Americas helped us plan the solution, made sure provisioning went smoothly and did everything we needed to support the client.”

-Director of Network Solution, US-based Business Communications Services Provider

China Telecom’s Strength and Stability Rewards Carriers

Extending services into a new geographic region presents risks to any carrier. Management can mitigate risk by selecting to do business with a strong, forward-looking global leader that is dedicated to its clients and carrier partners.

China Telecom has earned a reputation for service and management excellence that carriers can leverage to better serve its increasingly global client base. The company was once again named one of the 2007 “World’s Most Admired Companies” by FORTUNE Magazine and in 2008, Euromoney named China Telecom “Asia’s Best Managed Fixed Telecom Company.”

The company is shaping and facilitating the steady economic growth being experienced in the region. Its more than 670,000 employees share the commitment to place “Customer First. Service Foremost.” China Telecom has the largest IP network and fixed-line subscriber base in Asia and has the most capacity to and from China. The company has established bi-lateral direct circuits with 70 telecom carriers in 40 countries and regions and the list is growing.

China Telecom invests billions of dollars to develop the best-supported products and services for global business, including CN2 (Figure 3) and its cable network, such as the Transpacific Express (TPE) Cable (Figure 4). TPE is a cable that offers unprecedented capacity and performance with its own backhaul infrastructure in China and the United States. It has landing points in Shanghai and Qingdao China, Keoje, Korea, Tanshui, Taiwan and Nedonna Beach, US with full connectivity capability to all cities in China, all China Telecom Hong Kong and US PoPs and all of China’s neighboring countries. It connects directly to other cable systems including APCN2, SMW-3, FEA and EAC.

The FASTER cable system, a 9,000-km submarine cable system linking Japan and the West Coast of the U.S., is China Telecom’s most recent subsea cable investment and the first trans-Pacific subsea cable designed to deliver 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth.  With its state-of-the-art design, FASTER provides continuous connectivity and high capacity for cloud, video streaming, analytics, and the Internet of Things. It can support the expected four-fold increase in broadband traffic demand between Asia and North America, enhancing China Telecom’s infrastructure to support customers’ data traffic.

Building the Brand, Expanding the Reach

MNCs will continue to participate in the growing Chinese economy for many years to come, spawning further expansion of the country’s communication services sector. In support of clients’ requirements, carriers and telecommunications value added service providers worldwide must develop their short and long-term strategies for Asia expansion. In order to sustain their brand and revenue streams, they are advised to establish a relationship with an integrated communication services provider that has deep knowledge and extensive services throughout Asia.

As the North American subsidiary of the largest integrated communications service provider in China, China Telecom Americas is committed to helping carriers and service providers extend their reach and reinforce their brand with their customers by providing outstanding products that are backed by industry-leading SLAs. Investing heavily in the infrastructure and services needed for globalization, China Telecom Americas is making it easier for communication services providers to expand to Asia in support of their clients’ operations by the day.

About China Telecom Americas

China Telecom Americas, a wholly-owned US-based subsidiary of China Telecom Corp. Ltd., is an international telecom provider for Data, IP and Voice Wholesale services to multinational companies, organizations and international carriers requiring China domestic services and International access to China & Asia Pacific. With headquarters in Herndon, Virginia, and offices in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Jose, Dallas and Toronto, Canada, China Telecom Americas continues to expand its reach, including Latin America. China Telecom Americas provides a locally based, one-stop-shop, turn-key solution for everything from China domestic and international data circuits to IDC services, network management, equipment management, system integration and more.

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