HONG KONG, November 15, 2005 - Cisco Systems today announced that China Unicom will deploy its Cisco CMXTM (Cisco Mobile Exchange) solution in Beijing, Guangdong, Shandong and Heilongjiang. CMX will allow China Unicom to build a top quality, multi-functional unified wireless data access platform, on which the operator can upgrade tailor-made on-demand services, service-based authorization and tariff schemes, and service and customer management capabilities in a flexible manner.
The move to a wireless data access platform also facilitates China Unicom's development in the 2.5G and 3G mobile data business, optimizing their business platform and offering a wider variety of business plans and tariff schemes, so as to improve their customer service offering and increase profitability.
As the world's largest CDMA network operator, China Unicom provides customers with a myriad of services on the state-of-the-art CDMA 1X network infrastructure. These include SMS, games, video-streaming, mobile banking, Internet navigation, network games, ringtones and music downloads.
China Unicom has been actively preparing for the arrival of the 3G age, with the provision of high quality video-streaming, movies, music-on-demand and other new types of services. Through the Cisco CMX solution, China Unicom will enhance its capabilities in developing premium services and raising customers' spending on mobile services, shortening the time-to-market and offering service plans and tariff schemes in line with customer needs.
Mr. Tong Xiao-Yu, General Manager, Value Added Service Department, China Unicom, said, "China Unicom is now poised to increase ARPU (average revenue per user) by offering wireless broadband data services such as 'on-line' card and developing vertical markets. Our initiatives include understanding customers' requirements so that we can provide premium mobile data services tailor-made to their needs. We are pleased to adopt the Cisco CMX solution which enables us to provide customers with rich, differentiated services and enhance our competitive advantage and profitability."
Mr. Hanh Tu, Operation Director, Cisco Systems China, stated, "We are delighted to be working closely with China Unicom. As a global IP leader with leading-edge technologies and unrivaled experience, Cisco has empowered operators to optimize service platforms, create multiple tariff schemes and personalize data services, helping service providers to improve their competitive advantage in the wireless data value chain and strengthen their leadership in the industry. We believe through collaboration, Cisco will enable China Unicom to provide differentiated services together with excellent customer relationship management, and create multiple revenue streams."
Equipped with advanced technologies and all-round capabilities supporting business development, the Cisco CMX solution has been deployed by over 100 operators. Cisco CMX meets China Unicom's needs in developing both its mobile data business and its future 3G services.
A carrier-class solution, CMX has enabled China Unicom to manage real-time services and pre-paid applications. In addition, the operator can upgrade its network easily and seamlessly. Cisco CMX supports pre-paid and post-paid systems and allows operators to switch from air-time-based or per-byte tariff schemes to those based on services or applications.
Already supporting a broad spectrum of access including CDMA, GSM and WLAN, and with the ability to support other types of wireless access in the future, Cisco CMX can be expanded to handle user management and authorization, visit control and content screening and filtering.
About China Unicom
China Unicom Ltd is the second-largest mobile operator in China. It provides GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) and CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile services, as well as nationwide local, domestic and international telephony, IP telephony, data, Internet access, and paging services. It has the second largest fiber optic network in China, metropolitan fiber-to-the-building access infrastructure, the world's largest IP telephony network and China's largest paging network.
