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Frost & Sullivan Recognizes China Telecom Europe for Strongest European Growth

Based on its recent research on the information and communication technologies (ICT) and services market, Frost & Sullivan presents the 2012 Frost & Sullivan European Market Challenger: Asia-Pacific Telecoms Service Provider of the Year Award to China Telecom (Europe) Limited (CTE)

The award recognizes the market performance and European success of large, Asia-Pacific (APAC)-headquartered telecom enterprises that offer services to consumers and enterprises in Europe via operational branch offices across the region.

Globalization has driven many European companies to expand into the APAC region. The reverse is also happening, with APAC-based companies expanding their footprint in Europe. Either way, enterprises need ICT infrastructure in terms of services and connectivity between the regions to drive their global business aspirations.

“Our analysis of nine large APAC telecoms service providers that are fully operational in Europe shows continuous growth in terms of turnover and number of employees,” said Saverio Romeo, Industry Manager with Frost & Sullivan’s European telecommunications group. “With an average of 60 per cent of employees that are locals, the typical footprint of these service providers tends to be sub-regional, with headquarters in London and offerings that revolve around intercontinental communications services and data centres.”

Started in 2006, the driving vision of CTE is the creation of the Information Silk Road to connect Europe and Asia. Headquartered in London with subsidiaries in Frankfurt, Moscow, and Johannesburg, and a representative office in Dubai, CTE has shown the strongest growth among its peers. The company’s revenues grew at a remarkable compound annual growth rate of 42.37 per cent from 2008 to 2011, while staffing levels increased by 57.26 per cent over the same period. Currently, CTE customers are mainly large enterprises, but there is an increasing demand from medium-sized companies for its services. Moreover, CTE has introduced more choices of network solutions and innovative business models that have reshaped the traffic pattern as well as empowering their Carrier customers to expand the business development in the Euro-Asia Telecommunication market.

CTE’s Euro-Asia Network (ENS) offers terrestrial links between Europe and Asia . The current round-trip delay from London to Beijing is just 180ms and service availability has been an impressive 100 per cent for nine consecutive months (CTE internal network monitoring statistics).

CTE plans to expand its pan-EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) PoP network with new operations in other cities. The company has already an extensive network of Internet Data Centres (IDCs) throughout EMEA and APAC, and another 260 in mainland China.

“In May 2012, CTE launched a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the UK to primarily serve the Chinese community, and became the first Chinese telecom operator to launch MVNO services outside China.” said Romeo. “This is a very ambitious project that enables CTE to enter the consumer communications market in the UK and later in Europe.”

In recognition of these factors, Frost & Sullivan is pleased to present CTE with the 2012 European Market Challenger: Asia-Pacific Telecoms Service Provider of the Year Award in the communications and IT services market. Each year, Frost & Sullivan confers this award on the APAC-headquartered telecoms service provider that has expanded its European footprint with respect to communications and IT services during the past 12 months.

Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.