The fixed and mobile carrier, which merged with China Netcom in late 2008, will expand its international presence from 12 PoPs now to over 100 PoPs next year, Yan Bo, general manager of Unicom’s global business, told the Capacity conference in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.

 

Yan also said that Unicom is looking at expanding into the “carrier’s carrier” segment via partnerships with other carriers.

 

“We are learning a lot and will be looking for collaboration opportunities to get into that segment,” he said.

 

Although China’s telecoms market has weathered the global recession well – as has the economy, with 8% GDP growth projected for 2009 – Unicom considers a strong international business to be a key element alongside its domestic fixed and mobile business moving forward, said Yan.

 

Yan said Unicom’s status as a full-service telco since its merger with Netcom, as well as subsequent heavier competition, has already enabled it to improve its mobile voice service quality and focus more on customer service. The latter in particular is preparing the company to compete on the international stage, Yan said.

 

Yan also said that China’s nascent 3G sector was already driving data traffic to unprecedented levels in China.

 

“We have had to increase our internet ports by ten times to handle mobile data traffic growth,” he said.