Unlike other international telecom giants hoping to secure a place in the China market, Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) believes it can offer regional network coverage and is willing to go into partnership with local players.
The company, controlled by the Singapore Government, hopes to muscle into the mainland's mobile and data market, which it expects will post strong growth now China has entered the World Trade Organisation.
SingTel's executive vice-president Lim Chuan Poh said: 'There is no way we can buy China Mobile, but China nevertheless is a big market for us. We hope to become a mobile virtual network operator [in the mainland] and offer site-to-site services using our regional coverage.'
Mr Lim said SingTel had a passive investment approach, unlike Vodafone, which acquired aggressively, paying US$2.5 billion for a 2 per cent stake in China Mobile.
He said SingTel's approach was based on attracting Chinese parties to work with it to capture the roaming and mobile travel businesses between China and the rest of Asia.
The mainland telecom industry is undergoing a sweeping liberalisation that will allow foreign ownership, although Mr Lim said the process was complex and could take a long time.
In the data sector, SingTel subsidiary C2C was already engaged in a partnership with China Telecom and China NetCom to sell bandwidth capacity.
