Hong Kong, 13 January 2016 – China Telecom signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China Unicom in Beijing today. The signing ceremony was attended and witnessed by Mr. Wang Xiaochu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of China Unicom, Mr. Lu Yimin, Executive Director and President of China Unicom, Mr. Shao Guanglu, Senior Vice President of China Unicom, and Mr. Yang Jie, Executive Director, President and Chief Operating Officer of China Telecom, Mr. Yang Xiaowei, Executive Director and Executive Vice President of China Telecom.

Leveraging the endowment of resources of China Telecom and China Unicom, “Customer Service Quality Enhancement Project” was comprehensively implemented with the theme of “Co-building & Sharing of Resources for Customer Service Quality Enhancement”. The key objectives of the in-depth cooperation were: 1) to set a new model for the industry development via opening and sharing of various resources including network, business and service, and exploring the cooperation at business and capital levels; 2) to jointly promote the supply side structural reforms on network and handset to achieve cost reduction and return enhancement as well as operating efficiency improvement; 3) to offer better environment for information services to support the rapid development of “Internet +” and “Made In China 2025”.

Mr. Yang Jie, Executive Director, President and Chief Operating Officer of China Telecom, said this cooperation will promote “Innovation, Cooperation, Opening, Sharing” as the new normal of the industry. It will offer more superior network and service to the extensive customer base. It will also produce supplies in higher quality and value and promote information consumption. Mr. Lu Yimin, Executive Director and President of China Unicom, said the commencement of in-depth cooperation at strategic level is complementary to both parties in terms of their needs and advantages. The signing of the agreement allows the companies to focus on key topics, further define the area of cooperation and consolidate mutual understanding, which would attain bigger and more achievements in deeper and wider areas with the cooperation.

According to the agreement, both companies will commence their strategic cooperation in the following five areas: 1) to aggressively promote the network co-building and sharing to accelerate network coverage deployment and improve network service capability; 2) to enrich the variety of handsets to better satisfy the diversified demand from users, and jointly promote the “six-mode” handsets that are compatible with all networks as the national standard; 3) to improve the quality of interconnection between networks to enhance user experience; 4) to adopt new mechanism and market-operation for innovative business collaboration; and 5) to commence the cooperation with global operators together for international roaming service for quality enhancement.