China's Ministry of Information Industry has issued an International Communications Facilities Service License to China Tietong, one of the smaller communications service providers in the country, for it to run international communications services.

China Tietong has become the fifth operator in China that has obtained the license. The other four operators are China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Netcom. Local media says that MII gave this license to China Tietong to make up for the unequal competition it has been facing with in the past years. Previously, China Tietong was only licensed to provide the public with basic telecom services and value-added telecom services.

China Tietong says it has connected 10 Chinese port cities with Hong Kong SAR, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Korea and Vietnam through trans-border cables to meet the demands of international railways. At present, China Tietong has opened over 10G bandwidth for trans-border communications. The company says that the new license will help it reduce the operation costs for international services.

China TieTong is a major state-owned basic telecommunications operator. With total assets of CNY42.4 billion and a staff of 72000, It has established 31 provincial branches.