Tomizone breaks into China hotspot

Wireless internet company Tomizone has broken into the Chinese telecommunications market with a multimillion-dollar deal.

Tomizone has linked up with Chinese company Coordinate Technologies Communications to run Wi-Fi hotspots in airports, hotels and other key locations for China Mobile and China Unicom. The service is aimed at tourists - there are an estimated five million in China at any one time.

"We are enabling these telcos to monetise their Wi-Fi hotspots to foreigners or people with credit cards," said chief executive Steve Simms.

Tourists wanting internet access in China currently need to find a landline connection or pay roaming charges on mobile broadband.

"What we're seeing in Australasia is that punters are literally just walking into Harvey Norman, buying the box and taking it back and turning on their motel," said Simms. "Imagine the China market doing that."

He said the US market had become irrelevant because of the deals the company had done in India and now China - the China contract was worth "double digit millions".

Simms said a deal with one Chinese customer would put Tomizone services in 20,000 locations.

"Our growth is quietly scaring us because everyone talks about this recession - we're not seeing it in the communications business and thank goodness we don't have our eggs in the European and US basket," he said.