Donjin's DN600 supports two E1/PRI digital interfaces in a single slot for connection to the public telephone network.

Guangdong accounts for 16 percent of China's call center product sourcing base with Guangzhou and Shenzhen as main hubs.

Eighty-one percent of mainland China's call center telephony makers are located in Beijing, the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. Broken down, Beijing has 38 percent share of makers, Shanghai has 27 percent, and Guangdong has 16 percent.

There are about 20 active makers in Guangdong. Guangzhou and Shenzhen are emerging as the main production hubs for call center telephony products. The leading makers and exporters are Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, Shenzhen DingMing Electronic Technology Co. Ltd and Shenzhen Donjin Communication Tech. Co. Ltd.

Call center systems were introduced in China in the 1990s. In 2005, there were at least 150,000 call center attendants on the mainland. The developing telecom industry and the need for QoS in the customer service and business segments are the current growth drivers for the call center industry on the mainland.

Some of Guangdong's advantages as a call center product sourcing hub are its fast rising IT industry, large production capacity and mature supply chain for raw materials. The province also has ports adjoining mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Zhanjiang. Secondary ports are located in Foshan, Dongguan and Zhongshan.

Further, Guangdong has aviation transportation network services that include the Guangzhou New Baiyun Airport and six other airports located in Shenzhen, Shantou, Zhuhai, Foshan, Zhanjiang and Meizhou.

The growth of the call center industry is also boosted by the strong financial and technical support provided by the local government to private companies that are expanding their overseas business.

The government extends its support in the form of policy funds, import and export rights applications, import and export quota applications, offshore investment verification, customs clearance procedures, and staff-entry management.

The implementation of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in Guangdong facilitates the easy shipment of products overseas. CEPA has also encouraged many foreign-invested companies to consider the province as their main production hub.

Makers engaged in system integration dominate the call center industry. Their products include voice boards, industrial control machines, PBXs and automatic call distributors (ACD). A large number of middleware and software have also sprung up, especially with the expansion of the market scale.

DingMing Electronic, established in 1995, is one of the earliest high-tech enterprises that focused on R&D, manufacturing and sales of computer and telephony integration (CTI) platforms in China. DingMing's product line comprises programmable voice switches, voice boards and various CTI tools and components.

The company provides terminal users with CTI-compatible hardware platforms. It is planning to add optimization solutions, such as voice and fax functions, in its upcoming models.

DingMing has produced more than 1 million ports of CTI platforms, making it a major supplier of CTI voice boards and programmable switches in China.

These products are widely used in the Asia-Pacific, specifically in fields such as telecom, information services, finance, stock exchange, insurance, and government and private companies.

Huawei's product line comprises wireless products, networking products, applications software and terminals. Its major products are based on the company's ASIC chipsets and shared platforms. This enables the company to provide highquality and cost-effective products and solutions.

Huawei has a workforce exceeding 40,000, of which 48 percent is dedicated to R&D. The company's R&D centers are located in Bangalore, India; Silicon Valley and Dallas, US; Stockholm, Sweden; and Moscow, Russia. The company also has R&D centers in Beijing; Shanghai; Nanjing, Jiangsu; Shenzhen, Guangdong; Hangzhou, Zhejiang; and Chengdu, Sichuan.

Donjin Communication is focused on convergence-type communication products. Located in Shenzhen, the company manufactures voice portals, text-to-speech (TTS), call logging, CompactPCI system boards, high-density voice processing boards and SS7 network applications, which are all parts of a call center system.

Donjin Communication has recently released the DN600, a DSP-based architecture. It provides digital telephone network service termination for computer telephony systems based on the CT Bus. It also features two E1/PR1 digital interfaces, in a single slot, so that it can be connected to a public telephone network. It has 60 channels of voice processing.

Call center systems in China are based on two architecture. The first type is PBX-based, and the other is based on voice boards and industrial control machines.

The PBX type is composed of PBXs, ACDs, CTI servers and interactive voice response (IVR) servers. The PBX type is expensive, and most companies cannot afford it.

Call center systems based on voice boards and industrial control machines are mainly applied in small throughput call centers.

Makers predict that VoIP technology is going to be widely used in the future, with ASR becoming a mainstream technology in the call center industry. The ASR is designed to reduce manpower needs, but the technology still needs further refinement.

Small- and medium-range call center systems based on enterprise-class PBX is predicted to develop in the coming years. Operation and management capabilities are the top priorities in future designs, followed by technology and function development.

Relatively high system costs, inefficient management and shortage of technical talent are some of the challenges faced by call center product suppliers in China.

With the exception of Donjin Communication, which exports voice board products, and Huawei, which exports PBXs, most call center product makers concentrate on the domestic market.

Most of these companies do not have English versions of their Websites, thus, making it difficult to breach new markets overseas.

Another challenge that makers should address is the level of technological development. Call center technology from developed countries are more advanced than that of the mainland's, thus deterring mainland products from entering the overseas markets.

Further, most call center products are sourced and used by government and large enterprises, confining the competition in the domestic market.

Only few suppliers ship their products to East Asia, Western Europe, the United States and the Middle East. Nonetheless, most of them are optimistic about future overseas market expansions.