Two African PoPs will be opened in Nairobi and Cairo to cover east and north Africa respectively, through CTE’s Dubai office, which opened in 2008. The Dubai network, part of its route connecting continents, is dubbed the “information silk road”.
Yan Ou, managing director at China Telecom Europe said: “The rapidly increasing bilateral trade between China, the Middle East and Africa is now running at approximately $350 billion. As more Chinese enterprises are expanding in the region, we are able to get closer to our customers.”
CTE has a network of 10 PoPs in Dubai and across Europe, including London, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Moscow, Paris and Stockholm with an extended reach to 50 PoPs across the network, accommodating 20 different carriers. Investment on the network exceeds €30 million and wholesale revenues account for 70% of the company’s total revenue.
“The southern portion of Africa presents CTE with another resource for strategic minerals,” said Paris Burstyn, senior analyst at Ovum. “These countries represent untapped resources that developed nations need for high technology and strategic products. CTE’s investments in links between Europe and the region will enable it to compete for traffic between the regions and to support the communications that industrial developers will need between the source and the consumers in Europe and China.”
