PRC readies for two-tier expo

By Paul Harris SHANGHAI China's largest ever telecommunications exhibition will be held in Shanghai in June this year. China Elecomm 2004 is scheduled to start on June 23 and is set to run for four days alongside the Forum on City Informatisation in the Asia Pacific Rim. Zhou Weidong, secretary general of the Shanghai Informatisation Commission, said that UN agencies, departments of the Chinese Government and the Shanghai municipal government will all be participating in the Forum. To date, more than 80 companies — including participants from Canada, Israel, the United States and EU countries — have agreed to participate in the exhibition. It is anticipated that more than half of those participating in the dual events will come from abroad. Exhibition organisers expect most of the biggest global telecoms players — including Fujitsu, Siemens, Alcatel (which has its Asia pacific headquarters in Shanghai), Bell and Nokia — to attend the exhibition in a bid to expand their presence in China's expanding telecoms market. Shanghai alone is expected, by the end of next year, to have 13 million mobile phone users and 8.3 million fixed line subscribers. With 532 million phone users nationally, China is currently the largest market in the world.