Flagship Chinese telecoms equipment maker Alcatel Shanghai Bell (ASB) saw its overseas sales including exports double in the first 10 months of this year, a company executive said.

 

Overseas sales including exports already account for half of the firm's total revenues, said Gerard Dega, president of ASB.

 

ASB, launched in 2002, is a joint venture between communications giant Alcatel and the Chinese Government. Alcatel, which completed a merger with Lucent on November 30, owns 50 percent plus a share in ASB, which is supervised by China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).

 

Dega attributed the surging overseas sales to Alcatel's sprawling business networks around the world as well as strong backing from the Chinese Government.

 

The ever-strengthening cooperation between the Chinese Government and developing countries has greatly benefited ASB's overseas expansions.

 

As a Chinese firm, ASB has secured some financial lines from the Chinese Government, which helped the firm win network equipment contracts in a number of countries such as Thailand, Laos and White Russia.

 

ASB's sales in China, including both the fixed-line and cellular network gear, also experienced robust sales during January-October, Dega said, without offering specific figures.

 

"The ever-growing number of mobile phone subscribers and a business transformation of fixed-line carriers are the two major drivers fuelling the telecoms equipment market in China this year," he said.

 

Mobile operators have been expanding their network capacity this year and ASB has grabbed many orders.

 

ASB also has won contracts to deploy NGN (next generation network) networks from China Netcom, the country's No 2 fixed-line carrier, in Beijing, Tianjin and Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

 

Dega expects ASB to grab an even larger share of China's telecoms equipment market, after the Alcatel-Lucent merger and the acquisition of the 3G (third generation) UMTS business of Canada's Nortel Networks.

 

ASB will be the only telecoms equipment maker to have all three standards for 3G telephony, which could put the firm at an advantageous position in China's future 3G market.

 

The three standards include the Europe-initiated WCDMA, known as UMTS, US-backed CDMA 2000 and China's home-grown TD-SCDMA.

 

Alcatel previously controlled a 17 percent share of the global UMTS market, and Lucent is devoted to developing CDMA 2000. The merger could complement both companies in their 3G businesses, enabling the combined operations to inherit the two firms' traditional advantages, Dega said.

 

Lucent's China operations formerly focused on CDMA and PHS (personal handyphone system), a limited mobility service.

 

The Alcatel-Lucent merger could expand the company's R&D capabilities in China. After the merger, the new operations in China will have 10,000 employees with half working on R&D activities, as well as two manufacturing sites in Shanghai and Qingdao.

 

Alcatel was one of the first foreign companies committed to supporting TD-SCDMA. In 2004, ASB announced it would partner with China's Datang Mobile to jointly develop TD-SCDMA technology.

 

(China Daily December 6, 2006)