Akamai Technologies and China Telecom are teaming to improve the speed and reliability of Internet service in China, the companies said this morning.

Under a new partnership, Akamai will place its edge servers inside China Telecom's network, improving the delivery of static and rich Web content and applications to subscribers and providing better use of its bandwidth. Financial terms of the pact were not disclosed.

Akamai now has more than 14,000 servers in 1,100 subscriber Internet service provider networks in 70 countries.

"Given its substantial presence and subscriber base, China Telecom is a strategic network partner for Akamai," George Conrades, Akamai's CEO, said in a statement.

Conrades likes the potential of the market and what it could mean for expanding business in the populous country.

China had 33 million ISP accounts in 2002 as estimated by Gartner. The IT research firm expects the number of individual Internet accounts in China to reach 71.7 million by the end of 2006.

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