Environment & Infrastructure - Business Overview
Thoroughly participating in businesses, from infrastructure development to telecommunications services
For Japanese trading companies, telecommunications business generally means trade business to supply overseas telecommunications carriers/operators with high-performance telecommunications equipment manufactured in Japan. Likewise, Sumitomo Corporation, for years, has been engaging in this business in many countries in order “to contribute to society through infrastructure development, adding our value to it.”
Through such development, we have acquired expertise in the telecommunications industry as well as region-specific knowledge, and our staff members with a wealth of knowledge has increased. With a view to leveraging these intellectual properties toward contributing to international society, we have pursued various possibilities, regardless of the existing framework of trade companies. Starting in 1995, we have been working on “new telecommunications business” by a trade company?taking it one step beyond trade business by contributing to society through “participating in management of telecommunications operators.”
East Telecom is based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital.
Super iMAX, like East Telecom, is based in Tashkent.
The first policy in our new business is to focus on regions in which we are rich in expertise. Considering the level of needs and growth potential, we have concluded that Russia/CIS, Asia, and Pacific/America are strategic regions.
Uzbekistan, within the CIS countries or former Soviet Union territory, is considered as one particularly promising country. With rapidly expanding demands for mobile phones and broadband Internet, two domestic telecommunications operators, in whose management we participate, have been responding to those diverse needs.
East Telecom (ET), a long-distance telephone company, is one of the operators Sumitomo has invested. The company owns optical fibers that connect major cities in the country and leases its digital backbone channels to mobile phone service providers and broadband service providers in order to expand high-speed inter-city telecommunications services. The other is Super iMAX (SiM), which provides variety of telecommunication services to the corporate users with high-speed wireless Internet based on WiMAX technology, an advanced wireless communications standard. SiM applies digital backbone channels leased from ET in providing high-speed wireless Internet service in eight major cities throughout the country.
Next＞＞＞ Looking toward local cities in the development of the entire country
