China Telecom expands to Texas

China Telecom Americas (CTA) has opened an office in Dallas to handle the state's increasing presence of Chinese companies and Chinese.

CTA held an opening ceremony for the branch on Oct 20 in Houston. The office will focus on promoting carrier service under the brand CTExcel, corporate information, communication and technologies (ITC) and cloud solutions, as well as business collaboration with its partners such as AT&T, Huawei and ZTE USA, all with headquarters in Dallas.

Zhao Hui, vice-president at CTA, said that the company primarily focused on serving US companies when it first came to the US in 2000. Beginning in 2013, CTA set up a team to concentrate on serving Chinese companies and Chinese.

"In the past three years, our business has been growing at 60 percent a year," said Zhao. "We provide comprehensive ICT services to some of the major Chinese companies in the US, including Bank of China and Fuyao Glass America, which produces a quarter of the auto glass in the US."

CTA's CTExcel carrier service has signed up more than 50,000 customers in the US in a little more than a year, said Zhao. Its service package offers duel sim cards with a US number and a China number, plus free minutes between China and the US. The service has been very popular among Chinese students studying in the US and business people who travel a lot between China and the US.

"Our numbers show that there are more than 300,000 Chinese university students and scholars in the US. If counting primary schools, the number is as high as 450,000. There are many opportunities," said Sun Feng, CTA's mobile business director. In Houston, there are five CTExcel retail stores, with more to come, he said.

CTA has provided service for many high-level visits to the US by Chinese government officials.

The opening event was co-hosted by the Houston chapter of China General Chamber of Commerce USA (CGCC), with scores of executives attending from Chinese companies, many of them CTA's corporate customers.

Li Shaolin, president of the chamber's Houston chapter, welcomed CTA to Texas and as a new member to the local chapter.

"Our chapter has grown from 39 to 70 in a little over a year. Our goal is to increase it to 80 by August next year. We plan to add associate membership and admit US companies to further benefit our member's business collaboration," he said.

Li Qiangmin, China's consul general in Houston, said that competition in the US telecom market is very fierce, but that CTA's business strategy in the US reflects its confidence in expanding its international business. With more Chinese and businesses coming to Texas, "CTA's Texas office will surely bring new growth to the company," he said.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com