Growing international hub plays key role as China Telecom Europe network expands to support bilateral trade of more than 350 billion US dollars between the Middle East, Africa and China

The Dubai-based Middle East regional headquarters and network hub of China Telecom Europe (CTE) is to be expanded to cover North Africa as the giant international wholesale telecommunications carrier continues to enlarge its network and services between the EMEA region, China and the wider Asia Pacific market.

Since opening the Dubai office in 2008 as part of its “Information Silk Road”, CTE has seen traffic grow enormously in the region – particularly in Dubai itself. The Dubai operation is part of what is now recognised as the highest quality and most resilient network connecting Europe and Asia. It already has a choice of three terrestrial routes and a fourth – involving Kazakhstan – is due to open before the end of the year.

“Dubai has been an important and highly successful part of our network from the outset and we have decided to utilise it  for our growth into North Africa,” said Mr Ou Yan, Managing Director of China Telecom (Europe) Ltd.

“The rapidly increasing bilateral trade between China and Middle East and Africa – now running at some 350 billion US dollars - has demanded  even more reliable and efficient communication solutions with China and Asia as a whole. This is what our network is providing. As more and more Chinese enterprises are expanding into the region, we are able to get closer and closer to our customers,” he added.

“This is all part of our vision to create what we call the ‘Information Silk Road’, stretching across EMEA and providing highly resilient, carrier class access to the largest communications network in China and to an expanding global network, which now includes as many as 20 long distance submarine cables.”

The new North African POPs (Points of Presence) are likely to be located in Nairobi and Cairo, to cover East and North Africa respectively.  They will become part of a network with POPs already in Dubai, London (2), Frankfurt (2), Helsinki, Johannesburg, Moscow, Paris and Stockholm and with a further 50 extended POPs elsewhere across the network.

Investment on the network and operations already exceeds 30 million Euros and wholesale revenues now represent nearly 70% of CTE revenues, with 2010 figures expected to top 15 million Euros for 2010 – a 40% increase on the previous year.

The network offers single channel speeds of up to 10Gbps and supports SDH and DWDM transmission technology. Bandwidth is also scalable from E1 to STM-64.

“Some of the world’s leading carriers already depend on CTE for connections to China and elsewhere in Asia Pacific and with so much business-critical traffic involved, they need truly world class levels of reliability, transmission speed, quality and customer service,” added Mr Ou Yan.

“This is all helping to further strengthen the collaboration with local carriers and partners for synergistic cooperation because we know China and Asia very well and can better deliver for our partners as well as their own customers’ China strategies.”
“I’m very proud of what has been achieved in just four years and now we look to our colleagues in Dubai to further extend our services into the growing markets of North Africa.”