Japan Telecom president Haruo Murakami and China Telecom president Zhou Deqiang met in Beijing on Thursday last week and signed a memorandum of understanding to build links, the Japanese firm's spokeswoman Kazumi Narihiro said.

"Under the accord, the two companies will seek future cooperation in providing telecommunications services," she said, adding that no further details had been decided.

"The agreement thus includes all sorts of possibilities," she said.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily reported that the two firms planned to cooperate in areas including high-speed communications and mobile phone operations in China.

The duo aimed to launch international high-speed data transmission services using the advanced ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) system, the business daily said.

In the mobile Internet business, Japan Telecom planned to support China Mobile Communications Corp, the Chinese company's mobile phone arm, in the introduction of third generation (3G) services, it said.

The tie-up would also help the world's biggest mobile phone company Vodafone Group plc of Britain to expand in China, the paper said. Vodafone owns a 20-percent stake in Japan Telecom.

The latest move came after Japan's second-ranking KDDI Corp confirmed last Wednesday it had struck a deal to provide mobile phone and Internet connection technology to China Unicom Ltd.

Last November NTT Communications Corp, part of Japan's No 1 telecoms group NTT, also struck a deal with China Telecom to jointly provide their respective customers with international telecommunications services, using Internet technology.

With China's entry into the World Trade Organization pending, China has decided to liberalise the telecoms sector in a bid to accelerate competition and improve services in the booming market.

China's Ministry of Information Industry said there were more than 100 million mobile phone users in China by the end of March -- the world's second largest market behind the US -- compared with about 60 million in Japan at the end of last year.

(China Daily 06/13/2001)