On August 20, 2003, ZTE and Romanian telecom operator POSTelecom held a grand signing ceremony at the People’s Great Hall in Beijing for their overall telecom cooperation agreement, which indicated that ZTE would participate in the construction of the nationwide telecom network in Romania. Romanian president Ion Lliescu and Chinese president Hu Jintao attended the signing ceremony.Other VIPs attendants were Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan, Foreign Minister Li zhaoxing, Minister of Information and Industry Wang Xudong, Romanian Minister of Telecom and Information technology, CEO of POSTelecom Gabriel Matesscu and CEO of ZTE Corporation, Hou Weigui.Under this agreement, POSTelecom will adopt ZTE’s advanced Softswitch, broadband data and wireless access products to build the national backbone voice and data network in Romania based on Softswitch technology. This network will become the first nationwide commercial network based on Softswitch technology in the world.Mr. Hou Weigui, CEO of ZTE Corporation told the press, “With years’ accumulation of technology power and market experience, Chinese telecom equipment supplier are keeping pace with the international advanced level in Softswitch, mobile communication, 3G and other latest technologies. We are fully equipped to render services to overseas operators. ZTE will continue to cooperate with foreign operators and build the world-class famous brand by virtue of its first class products, total solutions, customer-oriented and all-around localization services.”This cooperation agreement has laid a solid foundation for ZTE’s high end products to penetrate into Romanian and European market on a large scale.Currently, ZTE Corporation is one of the companies that own the full range of Softswitch products in the world. Designed for telecom application, ZTE’s products have the powerful scalability and guarantee the smooth migration to NGN for operators. In 1998, ZTE participated in the International Softswitch Consortium (ISC) and became the first Chinese company engaged in the Softswitch R&D. In 2001, ZTE’s Softswitch products obtained the first network access license issued by Chinese Information Industry Ministry. In 2002, ZTE launched China’s largest Softswitch network covering 10 cities for China Netcom, which is also the first commercialized Softswitch network in China.The international market is becoming the most important target market of ZTE. In 2002, ZTE put forward the strategies that the company would make breakthroughs in some key countries with large population and great market potential. In 2003, ZTE’s GSM, CDMA, switching and transmission products were awarded with large value contracts in countries like India, Russia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Algeria. In the first half year of 2003, ZTE achieved a year-on-year increase of over 100% in its overseas sales, effectively speeding up the continuous development of the company.