British Telecom (BT) will build more service centers and recruit more employees in China, the world's biggest mobile phone market, said Kevin Taylor, managing director for British Telecom in the Asia-Pacific region.
The UK telecom carrier needs to follow the eastward shift of the global economy's center of gravity and increase its China presence, Taylor said.
"More than 80 percent of our customers are investing in Asian countries, such as China and India," he said.
Taylor made the remarks after his company's British rival, Vodafone Group, announced on Sept 8 that it will offload its entire 3.2-percent shareholding in China's biggest carrier, China Mobile, for $6.6 billion. The move is part of the company's new push to shed its minority assets around the world.
On Sept 11, BT said it will meet officials from China Telecom, the smallest of China's three telecommunications carriers, to explore potential cooperation, Reuters quoted BT Chief Information Officer Clive Selley as saying.
That raised speculation BT may seek closer cooperation with Chinese telecom operators after Vodafone's China Mobile share sale.
But BT is not interested in purchasing stakes in the Chinese telecom carriers, Taylor said.
"It wouldn't be a strategy for us to hold a minority stake in Chinese telecom carriers," he said. "What we want is organic growth."
The company plans to continue opening service centers in China and will hire 300 people in the Asia-Pacific region in the coming 11 months, Taylor said.
BT's China operations are focused on serving business users, especially multinationals' operations, which need globally networked services, such as virtual private networks.
The company has enjoyed rapid growth in the country, as a growing number of multinationals have been expanding their China offices.
Taylor said BT plans to strengthen its partnerships with China Telecom and China Unicom. But he also called for the government to accelerate the opening-up of the domestic market to foreign telecom carriers.
He also said BT has been seeing increasing demand from Chinese multinationals expanding in overseas markets, which will generate a great amount of revenue.
