I.Business Cooperation with International Partners and Partners from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan

Having established mutual direct circuits with 69 telecom carriers in 40 countries and regions in the world, overseas business partners of China Telecom mainly scatter in Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Oceania, Africa and China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. China Telecom can provide the telephone voice service to the whole world. The voice services include the IDD, ISDN, HCD, ITFS, UIFS, VPN and the calling card service, etc.
 
China Telecom has carried out international Internet cooperation with 85 overseas telecom operators. The international transmission outbound bandwidth has reached 339Gbit/s. The international position of the CHINANET has been significantly raised and the CHINANET has now become the top Internet network in the Asia-Pacific and the world as well.
 
China Telecom has carried out international data communications cooperation with 42 telecom operators in 24 countries and regions, providing international data services to the whole globe, including the IPLC, FR, ATM, IP VPN and the corresponding value-added services.

China Telecom further strengthened the foreign cooperation for its international data services, attracted more overseas telecom operators to select China Telecom's networks to provide their transnational customers with global networking. On the other hand, in carrying out the ¡°Going global¡± strategy, the capabilities of enterprises with China's capital and Chinese merchants were further improved.

In 2008, China Telecom took in the previous 21 roaming partners for the CDMA network from China Unicom and the smooth transition for the CDMA network has been successfully realized. Based on the existing roaming cooperation, further expansion for more roaming partners and wide scope of services for CDMA network have been implemented, realizing the seamless roaming service worldwide from C to C and C to G network.
 

II.Network Cooperation with International Partners and Partners from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan
 
In the last decade, China Telecom has constructed and taken part in 18 terrestrial fiber optic cable systems and 24 international submarine cable systems connecting every part of the world, with a total output bandwidth of 625Gbit/s. China Telecom owns two landing stations (both Chongming Station and Shantou Station), where three major submarine cable systems were landed, which are the SEA-ME-WE 3, the China-US Cable System and the APCN2, and the new Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) system, which was put into operation, was also landed in Chongming Station.

In 2008, China Telecom further increased investment on its network construction. The TPE system initiated by China Telecom was constructed and put into service, commissioning 12.5Gbit/s circuits directly between China and the United States, increasing the output bandwidth of China Telecom from 150Gbit/s to 235Gbit/s in the Northern America direction. In the European direction, the China-Russia No.2 cable system with a capacity of 30Gbit/s was put into operation at the end of 2008. In 2008, China Telecom completed the expansion of the systems with VTI, VIETTEL and EVN of Vietnam, and system expansion with ETL of Laos and the second route fiber cable with LTC of Laos. Between 2006 and 2008, China Telecom completed the fiber cable connections with Mongolia Mobicom and Mongolia Railcom, being the first in network connection among the domestic operators, with an outbound bandwidth of 15Gbit/s to Mongolia. The west line of Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hongkong project in cooperation with Hutchison was put into operation in August of 2008. This is the third line between the Mainland China and Hongkong. Currently only China Telecom has the ownership.

Having owned large-capacity and high-effective Submarine Cable Systems, China Telecom has also carried out cooperation with the bordering countries and regions on the wide scope by completing a number of bordering terrestrial cable systems, such as new China-Russia cable (TEA), China-Vietnam, China-Myanmar, China-Laos, China-Kazakhstan, China-Russia, China-Mongolia, China-Indian, Mainland China -Hongkong, Mainland China-Marco, TAE (connecting Asia-Europe continent) and CSC cable (connecting China and Southeast Countries). China Telecom actively responded to the government call to participate in the project constructions of the ¡°Mekong River Information Highway¡± and the ¡°SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) Information Highway¡±. With that effort, China Telecom greatly developed the transit services and strengthened its position as the Asia Pacific telecommunications transit centre. Today, China Telecom has become the gateway provider for those operators in other parts of the world and those operators bordering with China for their international connectivity and also a bridge linking Europe, Asia, Oceania and other continents.

Up to now, the total outbound bandwidth for international transmission and connections with Hong Kong, Marco and Taiwan has reached 411Gbit/s while the international Internet bandwidth has reached 339Gbit/s, and the outbound bandwidth of CN2 has reached 21Gbit/s.

III.Overseas Development

In 2008, China Telecom fastened its step in the overseas development. To support the business development and raise the market competitive power of China Telecom (Americas) Corporation, the mother company invested USD 20 million in 2008. The total investment has reached USD 43 million. With the new investment in hand, China Telecom (Americas) Corporation expanded its network by adding the PoP in Seattle and set up the sales representative office, making a proposal of establishing a subsidiary company in Brazil and got the approval from the group company. In 2008, China Telecom (Hongkong) Limited established the cooperative PoPs in Japan and Taiwan, and set up the sales representative offices in Taiwan and Vietnam. China Telecom (Europe) Limited newly set up a representative office in the United Arab Emirates and established a PoP for ChinaNet in Frankfurt of Germany.
 
The three subsidiary companies of China Telecom (Americas) Corporation, China Telecom (Hong Kong) International Limited and China Telecom (Europe) Limited have become the main structure of China Telecom's overseas development. The three companies are respectively responsible for the market development in the Americas, Asia and Oceania, Europe, Middle East and Africa. With the reasonable service structure and rapid increase of customers of high quality, the overseas companies have made remarkable progress in the business development. Up to now, the distribution points are scattered in more than 14 countries and regions all over the world, focusing on the provision of all kinds of telecommunications service and other information services to the multi-national enterprises and the Chinese enterprises and individuals with a target of ¡°Going global¡± to develop their own businesses.
 
As the scope of overseas development is expanding, the international market position of China Telecom is further strengthened, and the influence of China Telecom upon the overseas development and its customers is continuously enhanced.

IV.Cooperation with the International Organizations and Multilateral Cooperation
 
For many years, China Telecom is actively taking part in the research and formulation of the standards regarding the international telecom technology and services and the activities of ITU's Study Groups, and the multilateral co-operations have been further enhanced.

From the practical point of views, China Telecom paid more attention on the following-up study and the research work in the new foresighted technology, such as the mobile technology, services and network, and also on the study on the IPTV development strategy and business model, and close attention on the development of VoIP, Instant Messaging, and the NGN technology, its new product development and standards formulation. All these laid a good foundation for the company's long-term and sustainable development by introducing the IMS network with the fixed-mobile convergence concept.
 
In the aspect of NGN GSI, China Telecom took the leader to study the new proposals. At the three meetings of ITU-T NGN GSI in 2008, China Telecom actively participated and made important contributions. In the next study period, China Telecom will lead the study of four new proposals, i.e., ¡°Multimedia Calling Centre¡±, ¡°Signaling Requirement of IP Centrex Service¡±, ¡°NGN Protocol Monitor and Controller¡± and ¡°Monitor and Controller for NGN Voice Services¡±. At the same time, China Telecom decided its key work at ITU to make sure that China Telecom¡¯s requirement will be fully reflected in the new standards formulation.

In the aspect of FG IPTV, at the five meetings of ITU-T IPTV GSI in 2008, China Telecom actively participated and made important contributions. In addition, China Telecom followed up closely with the middleware study of IPTV product. In future, China Telecom will focus more on the study on IPTV terminals, middleware, service navigator, etc.
 
In the past years, China Telecom continued to send delegates to assume 12 positions of editors in the ITU-T SG, and one position of Rapporteur, and one co-chairman of the working group. In addition to the active participation in the ITU activities, China Telecom also participated in a dozen of international telecom standard forums. In a word, China Telecom is now playing more important role in the international telecom organizations and multilateral cooperation, keeping its speaking power and influence on the international platform. The active participations in the international organizations by China Telecom also got affirmation and high praise from the competent departments of the government.

The following are the main international organizations/forums in which China Telecom has actively taken part and has the membership:

•  International Telecommunication Union (ITU, including ITU-T, ITU-R and ITU-D)
•  Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC)
•  Asia-Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC)
•  Pacific-Indian Ocean Restoration Committee (PIRC)
•  Optic Internet Forum (OIF)
•  Open Mobile Association (OMA)
•  Quality Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications Forum (QuEST)
•  Telecommunications Management Forum (TMF)
•  Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance (FMCA)
•  Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF)
•  DSL Forum (DSL)
•  International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC)
•  European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
•  MPLS and Frame Relay Alliance (MFA)
•  3G Partner (3GPP)
•  Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax)
•  Full Service Access Network (FSAN)
•  CDMA Development Group (CDG)
•  The Femto Forum (Femto)
•  International Forum on ANSI Standards Technology (IFAST)