CyberWorks seeks regulatory rethink on role
Monday, November 26, 2001
BEN KWOK
Telecommunications operator Pacific Century CyberWorks has asked the industry regulator to look beyond its perceived ''dominant'' position in the fixed-line market and adopt a more flexible set of regulations.
Deputy chairman Linus Cheung Wing-lam said he believed that, as a local company owning the largest telecoms operator in Hong Kong, CyberWorks should be given some credit for easing any concerns the regulator might have had that such crucial infrastructure might have fallen into foreign hands.
''We are not asking for privileges. What we are asking for is to be treated fairly,'' Mr Cheung said. ''If we were not a locally based company - or if there were no [chairman] Richard Li [Tzar-kai] what might have ended up happening to Hongkong Telecom?''
Mr Cheung, a former chief executive at Cable & Wireless HKT, facilitated the sale of the group to CyberWorks, making a case for its bid over a contending offer from Singapore Telecommunications in February last year.
With the issue of the change of control and monopoly in the past, Mr Cheung suggested the Government needed to consider what was best for Hong Kong in the wake of the global trend towards deregulation.
The Office of the Telecommunications Authority should implement measures thatwould best suit market development, Mr Cheung said.
''Gone are the days when regulators set their sights on mobile phones and fixed-line services as separate entities, without looking at the two services as a whole,'' Mr Cheung said.
Considering the widespread use of mobile phones, CyberWorks was no longer a dominant telecoms operator in Hong Kong, he said.
With about 3.5 million fixed-line users, CyberWorks had less than 40 per cent of the 9.7 million phone users (5.8 million for mobile and 3.9 million for fixed lines) in Hong Kong, he said.
In light of this, Mr Cheung suggested the future approach to market deregulation should focus on encouraging telecoms investments, rather than penalising CyberWorks.
There were heated debates this month among telecoms operators as to how to open up the telecom market going forward into 2003. Fixed-network operators such as Wharf New T&T and New World Telephone which secured full service telecom licences in 1995 - complained CyberWorks-HKT had adopted anti-competitive behaviour. They said this hindered their network roll-out and asked for an open access to its last-mile lines.
In its defence, CyberWorks challenged the commitment made by these telecoms operators in the past six years, and criticised rivals for not building their own networks.
''If neither new operators nor existing operators made new investments, that would would be in conflict with the spirit of deregulation,'' Mr Cheung said.
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