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HK Government Grants 3G Licenses to Four Telecom Firms
The Hong Kong Special Administrative government on Wednesday announced it had provisionally awarded four licenses for third-generation (3G) mobile phone services at the minimum reserve price.
The four successful bidders in the pre-qualification process of the 3G licensing were Hong Kong CSL Ltd, Hutchison 3G HK Ltd, SmarTone 3G Ltd, and SUNDAY 3G (Hong Kong) Limited, Carrie Yau, Hong Kong's secretary for information technology and broadcasting, announced at a press conference.
Hong Kong CSL Ltd is jointly owned by Australia's Telstra Corporation Ltd and Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd. Hutchison 3G Ltd is 75 percent owned by Hutchison Whampoa Ltd and 25 percent by NTT DoCoMo Inc.
SmarTone 3G Ltd is a 100 percent subsidiary of SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings Ltd, and SUNDAY 3G (Hong Kong) Ltd is wholly owned by SUNDAY Communications Ltd.
The four bidders have each been awarded a license at reserve price of five percent of royalty payment based on network turnover, with a flat minimum annual payment of 50 million HK dollars for each of the first five years and rising minimum annual payments from the sixth year until the 15th year.
"We welcome the result of this exercise because both the number of licenses and the price have been determined by the market," Yau said, adding that it's "an efficient, fair and transparent way of awarding licenses."
The pre-qualification process will be followed by a spectrum auction. The third phase of the auction will be held to decide the allocation of specific spectrum to successful bidders.
It is expected that the three-phase auction would be completed by September or October 2001. The government aims to issue the four 3G licenses by the end of 2001, according to Yau.
3G is the next generation of mobile telecommunications, which will allow mobile access to personalized multimedia services, anytime, anywhere.
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