British connection is growing stronger

China Mobile's efforts pay off with reputation for good service among customers in UK

At 8 am in London, when financial market trading begins, bankers and traders are already calling colleagues in China and putting trades through stock exchanges there, as if the market is next door.

China Mobile uses its London office as a bridge to deal with a whole host of Western tier-one carriers across the UK and Europe.

This level of contact is natural to London's financial community, and few traders are likely to think about the intricacies of the fast, reliable and cost-efficient connectivity that is enabled by the overseas expansions of Chinese telecom carriers, such as China Mobile.

"We are expanding into the UK market by leveraging on our heritage as a leading Chinese telecom carrier, while focusing on providing clients with innovative solutions and staying absolutely committed to goals," says Laura Zhang, general manager of China Mobile International (UK) Ltd, speaking from her office in the heart of the City of London.

The choice of location is a reflection of China Mobile's focus on serving financial clients, a service requiring significant reliability because of the sensitivity of financial transactions.

As well as serving London's financial services clients, China Mobile uses its London office as a bridge to deal with a whole host of Western tier-one carriers across the United Kingdom and Europe, including BT, Vodafone, AT&T, Belgium Telecom, and Orange.

"We specialize in providing connection into and out of Europe, and we hope to position ourselves as the network of choice for connecting Europe with China and Asia," Zhang says. "We are able to achieve this advantage because of our extensive terrestrial and submarine cables, and our teams in many international locations."

China Mobile has 13 terrestrial and submarine cables that connect Asia, Europe, Africa, and the United States with each other and several other geographic locations. It has 80 points of presence (the places where networks or communication devices can connect with one another), and an ambitious plan to increase that number to 133 by the end of 2017.

Dominique Meunier, head of telecom activities at the telecom think tank IDATE, says investment in cables connecting China and international markets by Chinese carriers, including China Mobile, has reduced the cost of communicating with China, compared with other emerging markets, such as Africa.

"Building the cables requires large up-front costs, and the fact that Chinese carriers have good sources of finance helps. The fact they have a large customer base in China means they can achieve economies of scale with such investments," Meunier says.

China Mobile was founded in Beijing in 1997 as a state-owned enterprise and was initially known mostly for providing mobile services to China's vast population. The company has maintained those advantages in the mobile phone sector and is now the world's largest mobile phone operator by number of subscribers, with 856 million.

But as technology moved on, China Mobile realized that mobile phone communication was only a small part of an increasingly connected world. In recent years, the company has developed more dedicated services in the financial services connectivity and internet services sectors.

To aid its international expansion, the company established a subsidiary, China Mobile International, in 2010. To date, China Mobile has 18 overseas locations. The office in the UK was established in 2011 and was one of the first overseas branches.

"The UK is a mature and broad market for telecommunications services, so as long as we provide high-quality products and services and control our costs to maintain cost advantage, then we can confidently establish ourselves in this market," Zhang says.

She explains that China Mobile has three key responsibilities in the UK.

"The first is to focus on our UK market operations. The second is to act as a networking hub connecting our customers with our company's overall strategic resources, including our global POP (point of presence) and our land and maritime cables. Thirdly, we provide after-sale services."

In fact, China Mobile's international expansion really dates back to the last century, when global carriers such as BT and Vodafone initially expanded into China, using China Mobile's services to provide domestic connectivity for their networks. Back then, global carriers moved into China in the footsteps of the first wave of multinationals establishing a presence as the country opened up to foreign investment.

"Over the years, as we started international expansion, we did not just provide connectivity for the China domestic market, but rather, we provided a lot of the connectivity activities for the wider Asia region," she says. "With a focus on providing reliable service, we now provide backbone networks for many companies, helping them to extend their networks into Asia."

China Mobile's international drive is not without competition, the strongest of which comes from its two domestic rivals, China Telecom and China Unicom, both of which established a presence in the UK in 2006 with similar services and vision.

Zhang acknowledges the competition but says her team's focus is on providing differentiated services, finding opportunities to be the first movers in certain innovative products and winning clients through its dynamic corporate culture.

As an example, she describes how her team recently fulfilled an urgent order for a wide bandwidth connection cable within 24 hours, when this type of service usually requires 35 working days.

"We received the order on a Friday afternoon. Knowing how important this cable is for customers, we worked very hard on the day and the next day, with the help of our colleagues in Hong Kong. We used the time difference to our advantage, and by Sunday, we were ready to hand the cable to our customer. It was possible because the connection needed was able to be satisfied through our existing network. This achievement also demonstrated the dedication of our employees. For us to achieve it within 24 hours was quite incredible."

Another recent UK flagship project that Zhang's team completed was providing a very flexible connectivity service package for a tier-one carrier in the UK, which involved a new solution the customer had never used before.

"At first, because the carrier company had not worked with us before, they did not know what to expect. But in the end they were so happy with our services that they decided to slightly adjust their existing infrastructure to accommodate the solution we provided, and we felt very proud of that."

Meanwhile, China Mobile also launched several innovative retail products, one of which is its First Connected Pocket Wifi, which is a portable Wi-Fi device that enables roaming for various electronic devices in more than 100 countries and regions.

Despite China Mobile's strengths in China, as a newcomer to the UK's established market, Zhang feels that investment in branding is crucial. To help build that brand reputation, her team regularly attends events such as the telecom industry fair Capacity Europe in London. Zhang's team also hosted a reception for its business partners at London's Tower Bridge.

The company also sponsors Capacity Europe's "Tea Station", where people can socialize and drink tea.

China Mobile International (UK) Ltd

Industry: Telecommunications

Year of expansion to the UK: 2011 Address: 90 Cannon Street, London, EC4N 6HA

China Mobile Limited

Year of founding: 1997

Operation Revenue: 708.42 billion yuan ($102.8 billion)

Employees: 438,645

Subscribers: 856 million