But the problem with China is how to get your foot in the door. Beijing closely guards its sensitive telecom sector, allowing just a few foreign investors, such as Vodafone and SK Telecom. Foreign telecom operators have been lobbying China for years seeking access to the market. Some still hold out hope for liberalisation, if only in select fields.

China allows foreign carriers to offer value-added services, such as data storage and call forwarding. But they aren’t allowed a controlling stake in any joint ventures and companies need to pay $250 million for a basic services licence.

“It’s a good opportunity. But the problem is there are just so many people that want to get into this business. You have to have some special and interesting products,” said Bill Crampton, president of Boston Training Technologies, which provides business training content in English to China Mobile.