News
[China service outsourcing magazine] ​ Livecom: cross border communication service for ten years——Interview with Chen Jiang, general manager of Liveco
Livecom is a comprehensive communication service solution provider with SBO license, which can provide end-to-end one-stop communication and information services for cross-border customers, so that more enterprises can obtain the necessary communication and information services for overseas expansion more efficiently, conveniently and economically.


Livecom satellite ground station

In the process of globalization of world economy, the development of communication industry has made great contribution. Communication shortens the time of information transmission in social mass production, greatly reduces the cost of social transaction, and promotes the improvement of economic level. The development of international communication makes it possible to organize transnational production and operation conveniently and timely.

At present, although China's cross-border communication service industry accounts for a relatively small proportion of service trade, as a high value-added service trade, the development momentum cannot be underestimated.

Recently, the reporter of Service Outsourcing Magazine interviewed Chen Jiang, the general manager of Livecom Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Livecom"), a provider of cross-border enterprise communication information services, in Beijing. (original link: Livecom: cross border communication service for ten years -- Interview with Chen Jiang, general manager of Livecom)

Livecom is a comprehensive communication service solution provider with SBO license, which can provide enterprises, governments and multinational organizations with all-round telecom / enterprise level communication solutions, and provide international enterprises, government departments, various institutions and operators with end-to-end one-stop communication and information services, so that more enterprises It is more efficient, convenient and economical to obtain the necessary communication and information services for overseas expansion.

Chen Jiang said that after ten years of development, Livecom has established overseas POPs in Hong Kong, London, Paris, Sydney, Cagliari, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and other places. Through these nodes, customers can be provided with end-to-end satellite & submarine cable special line, VPN special line service, satellite broadband Internet access service, enterprise integrated communication service, IDD international voice / international SMS service, overseas host hosting, virtual host leasing service, LAN integrated construction, overseas camp network security service, enterprise information IT planning and IT service outsourcing, overseas Chinese service Star TV service, overseas Chinese TV sub origin station service, etc.

The mission of Livecom is to provide end-to-end one-stop communication and information services for enterprises, government departments, various institutions and operators moving towards the world, and to help enterprises better move towards the world.


Chen Jiang, general manager of Livecom

New exploration in the field of communication

"Service Outsourcing" Magazine: it has been ten years since Livecom was founded in 2007. Can you briefly introduce your personal experience?

Chen Jiang: I have 20 years of working experience in ZTE and have been resident overseas for seven or eight years. I make  research and development at first, later in China to provide technical support. Since 1999, he has been in charge of overseas markets and served as regional general manager in Africa and Europe.

In 2005, I returned home from overseas and served as executive vice president of ZTE (Hong Kong), which is also a challenge to my career. Before leaving China, ZTE, as a communication equipment manufacturer, I worked in equipment, R & D, product promotion and overseas sales.

In ZTE (Hong Kong), at that time, ZTE executives hoped that I could make use of my past work experience overseas to explore some new business areas. Therefore, in 2007, ZTE established Livecom limited in Hong Kong, and since then, it has established Livecom Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. in China to independently carry out various businesses at home and abroad.

"Service Outsourcing" Magazine: can you briefly introduce the ten-year development of Livecom?

Chen Jiang: I have been in the overseas market for seven or eight years, and I often contact some enterprises and institutional users who go abroad in China. They have encountered many difficulties in carrying out their business overseas, one of which is related to our service business, namely cross-border communication service. At that time, we had met many large domestic enterprises that were almost blank in overseas information platform, and many large enterprises did not even have the mailbox of overseas enterprises. They have carried out many large-scale projects overseas, but communication with China can only rely on very traditional means, such as making international calls and faxing. Of course, at that time, the level of information technology did not develop to the current level and could not provide a modern means of communication.

At the beginning of the company's establishment, the parent company wanted us to do new business exploration and also gave strong support, including early investment and the construction of the company's operation framework, which enabled us to mobilize all positive factors, combine the resources of ZTE and our operation team, and carry out market development.

At the beginning of its establishment, the business category of the company was very single, starting from the international traffic platform. The so-called international traffic platform means that we set up international gateways in Hong Kong, through which we can connect domestic operators and overseas operators, and our company serves as a transit and Settlement Center for traffic.

Although international traffic is a very traditional business, there are still many technical difficulties to be solved in order to truly connect from equipment to a system, especially with a large number of overseas communication operators and suppliers. We have also spent quite a long time fully mastering this field.

Through the business accumulation of international traffic, we began to contact overseas target customers, which has also been our very concerned cross-border communication service scheme for institutional customers, so the company entered the second stage of development.

With the accumulation of a large number of projects, we have been able to provide enterprises, governments and multinational organizations with all-round telecom / enterprise level communication solutions, including special line access based on international submarine cable and satellite, satellite internet access, enterprise integrated communication solutions, international voice solutions, and enterprises Information IT consulting and outsourcing services, satellite TV access services, etc.

At the same time, we have established a mature and professional operation and maintenance team, which can provide customers with comprehensive communication solution design, specific implementation of network construction, and provide 7 * 24 operation and maintenance monitoring services, remote technical support and on-site technical support.

Livecom (Hong Kong) 7x24 operation and maintenance center

Deepen cross-border communication

"Service Outsourcing" Magazine: in the development process of this decade, what core competitiveness do you think Livecom has accumulated?

Chen Jiang: in the ten-year development process of Livecom, through the accumulation of projects, customers and the integration and optimization of existing businesses, we are also thinking about the common features of the services provided to enterprises? What are the core competencies we need to build? What needs to be improved?

In conclusion, I believe that Livecom has established three advantages in terms of enterprise competitiveness. These three aspects are realized through systematic planning and upgrading in the process of project mining and project accumulation in the early stage.

First, solution advantages. Any enterprise, no matter which industry, or even different enterprises in the same industry, is personalized in demand, without standardized things, which is the characteristics of institutions and group customers, and also the essential difference with to C business. In order to meet the personalized needs of enterprises, we need to tailor solutions for them.

The solution is not a simple written solution, but more importantly, implementation, including on-site implementation. In the process of implementation, it needs to involve many aspects of work, including logistics, customs clearance, on-site installation and debugging, as well as the allocation of various resources. For example, the laws of each country are different, and these things should be solved. These factors must be included in our solution.

Finally, after the implementation of the project, it is necessary to carry out operation and management. Our business characteristics are not one-off deal. Who will manage the project after delivery? Who will monitor and recover the daily system after it fails? All of them need to establish a complete scheme and a professional operation and maintenance team.

At the same time, a professional solution is not only a technical problem, but also a cost control problem. A solution is not only to solve the current problem, but also to ensure that the system needs to be upgraded in the future.

Based on this series of problems in all aspects, in our competition with our peers, we rely on the experience and accumulation of cross-border communication services for ten years, which can usually be superior to our competitors and more competitive. We often make targeted plans for some large bidding projects. Even in the face of giants in the industry, our plans are not inferior.

Second, a global cross-border communication service network. At present, we have implemented a lot of cross-border communication projects. During the implementation of these projects, we have established a very wide network overseas. These networks first come from the private networks we set up for enterprises, and finally become a large platform for all customers to share. For example, if many enterprises have special line requirements, we will rent a large bandwidth and cut it to each enterprise as a unique special line to reduce costs. The same is true for network nodes. The node we started with may be a server of a company, a device dedicated to an enterprise. In order to help enterprises reduce costs and improve reliability, we use cloud computing technology to virtualize a server into several devices, allocate and use them according to customer needs, and achieve resource sharing. The benefit is that not only the cost is reduced, but also the system can be upgraded more easily. After a virtual machine breaks down, it can be switched through software technology, and the above data can be backed up by some means, so as to achieve the purpose of protection.

Besides the network platform, a perfect cross-border operation and maintenance system is also established. The company's customer business tentacles are not one or two countries, but dozens or hundreds of points in many countries. For example, one of our customers has more than 90 business distribution points overseas. These distribution points have different project companies and business types, with different and complex needs. We need to provide operation and maintenance solutions for these needs.

Third, we have established a very professional operation team. Our business is all over the world, from solution preparation to on-site installation and commissioning as well as subsequent operation and maintenance, we need a well-trained team to be able to deal with various problems and solve various problems.

"Service Outsourcing" Magazine: can we use a project case to specifically describe what kind of communication services Livecom provides to which enterprises?

Chen Jiang: there are a lot of customers that Livecom serves, but it's not convenient to say a specific enterprise. I can give an example of a project, because our overseas projects are all one standard and one model.

For example, we have a cross-border enterprise customer who needs three or four business nodes to carry out business in a remote region of a certain African country. These nodes need to be connected to the domestic headquarters through a means. Because there is data on site that needs to be transmitted to the domestic headquarters frequently, the headquarters also has a lot of information or instructions to be transmitted to the African site.

How do we implement this project? We should connect these points through a feasible means. In Africa, the first choice is satellite, because most countries in Africa, especially landlocked countries, do not have reliable optical cable transmission. The more convenient, fast and reliable means is satellite. At the same time, limited by the coverage of the satellite, we need to land at the ground station in Europe, and then connect to the main node in Hong Kong through the local optical cable. Why can't we directly connect to Beijing through land optical cable? The main reasons are cost consideration and resource selection. Because the submarine optical cable resources from Europe to Hong Kong are relatively rich, and there are many resources to choose from. Connect the data to Livecom's computer room in Hong Kong through submarine optical cable, and then connect to the domestic headquarters through special line.

The difficulty of this cross-border communication service lies in that this line needs to adopt different transmission means, such as satellite, submarine optical cable and land special line, as well as cross-border many countries. Therefore, in the process of implementation of this project, it is necessary to study the laws and regulations of these cross-border countries as well as the situation of communication facilities, in which countries and regions equipment are deployed, and how many engineers are dispatched to these places for on-site construction.

As mentioned above, there are three locations in one country. For many of our customers, they may have more locations in more countries. We need to establish a cross-border service solution to realize the transmission of customers in data, voice, image, information application and other aspects.

"Service Outsourcing" Magazine: Chinese satellite TV service in Africa is also an important development direction of our company. As a cross-border communication service enterprise, why enter this field?

Chen Jiang: strictly speaking, Livecom's business is still dominated by communication and IT information business. The Chinese satellite TV service in Africa is an extension of our service in the process of serving our customers, CCTV international media (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

The main business of CCTV international media is to integrate excellent TV channels from mainland China, Hong Kong and overseas to form a great wall platform to spread to all regions of the world, providing high-quality TV channel services for overseas Chinese and the local mainstream society. Livecom and CCTV media jointly developed the Great Wall platform OTT for overseas distribution, which has been widely spread in the world.

Through cooperation, we use our own channels and sales networks established overseas to assist China vision media to explore the market. The Great Wall platform is aimed at institutional customers, including media companies in Europe and Africa, who receive Chinese TV through the platform and broadcast it in their network platform to deliver Chinese content.

Therefore, on this basis, we have established the brand of ASTV, aiming at the customers of to C, mainly the Chinese in Africa. Because the network of most African countries is not developed, there is no better way to receive TV. We receive domestic programs by satellite through providing users with satellite TV receivers. At present, ASTV has become a brand in Africa, covering more than 400000 users and nearly 10000 terminals.

In our company's business, ASTV has certain independence. It has been five years since it was expanded as a new business. The brand of ASTV is of great significance to Livecom. Not only further expand the content of the communication channels, enhance the communication ability of Chinese TV, make our mainstream media more widely spread abroad. ASTV is also committed to developing into a cultural communication platform with international influence, expanding the international market share of China's cultural products and services, so as to promote the mutual reference of Chinese and foreign excellent cultures, and promote culture to the African world.


Provide information guarantee for cross-border Enterprises


"Service Outsourcing" Magazine: after ten years of development, what kind of enterprise do you expect Livecom to become next?

Chen Jiang: from my personal point of view, we hope that this company will become an enterprise specialized in providing information guarantee for large enterprises and institutional users to realize overseas business development in the future.

Cross border communication needs professional companies to provide services, project plans, platform construction and operation and maintenance, which seems easy, but each link faces challenges, including technology, management, cost control to meet the dynamic needs of customers. At the same time, with the development of new technology in the communication industry, how to apply new technology to the field of our services, to maximize the interests of customers, all aspects of factors should be taken into account and they are a topic.

For example, the communication network itself is in constant development and change. Many enterprises now want to use the simplest and fastest way to realize the rapid deployment of business. We also need to consider that under the existing resources, we can not simply provide customers with a proprietary way to establish a proprietary network and a dedicated cloud computing platform. We want to adopt part of the public cloud resources, and transfer these resources As an important means of providing services to enterprises, the public cloud and the private cloud are mixed to build a hybrid cloud and finally meet the customer's goals.

To integrate the services we are providing, I will position Livecom as an international ISP operator (Internet service provider, that is, a telecom operator providing internet access services, information services and value-added services to a large number of enterprise users). In the process of cooperation with Livecom, enterprises can confidently entrust the construction of communication informatization to Livecom, so as to focus on their main business. In addition, through the continuous accumulation of experience and the increasing number of customers, Livecom is also constantly researching new technologies and solving new problems, so as to essentially improve the service quality of enterprise customers.