Roundup: Hong Kong Potential to Be Asia's Multimedia Hub

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, May 31, 2002

Roundup: Hong Kong Potential to Be Asia's Multimedia Hub

Hong Kong is well positioned to be the mobile and wireless multimedia hub in the Asian Pacific region with its high mobile penetration and the region's first multimedia messaging service.

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Hong Kong is well positioned to be the mobile and wireless multimedia hub in the Asian Pacific region with its high mobile penetration and the region's first multimedia messaging service.

This was generally acknowledged by over 200 local and overseas mobile communication experts and business leaders who were attending a multimedia messaging service (MMS) conference here Friday.

Jointly organized by the Internet & Telecom Association of HongKong and Hong Kong Wireless Technology Industry Association, the conference aimed to explore the market opportunities to be broughtabout by multimedia messaging service as well as the important issues concerning MMS's future development.

"Hong Kong has the most potential to be a regional mobile hub because it has already had one of the highest penetration rate of mobile phones and PDAs in the world and is also one of the first regions in the world to introduce multimedia messaging service, and it will be the same for 3G services," said Duncan Lau, chairman of the wireless technology industry association.

Recent Statistics show that Hong Kong is ranking the first in mobile telephone penetration, with a total of over 5 million mobile phone users among its total population of 7 million by the end of 2001.

Hong Kong CSL Limited, a pioneer in the mobile communications market in Hong Kong, launched Asia's first multimedia messaging service in April, bringing MMS applications to its customers with the support of Nokia's service creation center in Hong Kong.

On May 16, Hong Kong CSL, China Mobile and Nokia demonstrated MMS service over live GPRS networks in Beijing and Hong Kong, showing that both mobile subscribers in China's mainland and Hong Kong can in the near future send and receive multimedia messages and experience seamless, uninterrupted multimedia messaging service when traveling and using different GPRS networks.

The demonstration marked an important milestone in the development of MMS in the Asian market, further strengthening HongKong's leading position in the Asian mobile communications arena, said Hubert Ng, chief executive officer of Hong Kong CSL.

However, participants to the conference also said that to buildHong Kong into a regional mobile hub, a lot of issues need to be solved.

Network operators, device suppliers, content and solution providers need iron out issues such as inter-operator message transmission, compatibility of handsets, data roaming, business model accommodating the network operators and content and solutionproviders, government regulations and the charging model, Lau said.

One of the major objectives of this conference was to provide upturn development of new products so that the telecom players canexplore market opportunities as early as possible, and in turn, tocreate more job positions in the industry, said Hurt Chan, vice-chairman of Internet & Telecom Association of Hong Kong.

Participants also said that there is a need for exchanges amongindustry players to foster the developments of the industry in a pro-active manner.

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