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Technology Stocks : PCW - Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (314)	2/11/2001 10:57:10 PM
From: ms.smartest.person	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2248

Phone rivals gang up on CyberWorks By Roger Evers, Hong Kong iMail PACIFIC Century CyberWorks (PCCW) (0008) allegedly failed to comply with a government-set code of practice and tried to stifle competition out of the fixed-line market, legislators will hear today. The company's fixed-line arm, PCCW-HKT will be accused of harming consumers and businesses by hampering government-led moves to increase telecoms competition. Rival operators New T&T and New World Telephone will tell Legco PCCW's anti-competitive behaviour has especially hurt the SAR's burgeoning high-tech sector which relies heavily on reliable telecoms services. They will explain that by refusing to build adequate cables between its own network and its rivals, PCCW has created a traffic bottleneck that blocks thousands of phone calls. New T&T had up to 10 per cent of its customers' calls dropped at peak times and many business customers switched back to PCCW's more expensive service because of the bottleneck, the company said. Even New T&T's sister company iCable returned to PCCW. New T&T and New World Telephone will explain how PCCW systematically hampered their expansion into new districts and erected barriers to make it harder for its customers to switch services - against a government-set code of practice. ``PCCW-HKT effectively controls the growth of its competitors and maintains its dominance,'' New T&T says in a 10-page submission documenting CyberWorks alleged anti-competitive practices. ``Consumers are deprived of genuine choice of service providers and the attainment of the government's telecommunications policy objectives is at risk,'' it says. The fixed-line market was deregulated in 1995 along with the IDD (international direct dial) market, when Hong Kong Telecom (bought last year by PCCW) was paid $12 billion in cash and waived licence fees to give up its monopoly. PCCW still has a 95 per cent share of the fixed-line market, while its share of the more open IDD market has slipped to less than 40 per cent. PCCW was slammed last month when it increased its monthly tariff by a maximum 20 per cent to $110 per month - a rise well above the 2 per cent average increase in wages over the year and in the face of unemployment double that before the Asian crisis. More than 75 per cent of consumers can't move to cheaper rival fixed-line operators because of limited coverage. ``Most people can't change to another operator,'' Democratic Party legislator Sin Chung-kai said earlier. ``They are forced to pay a high price to a company they don't choose.'' The rivals blame their limited coverage on PCCW's tactics. Roger Evers 12 February 2001 / 01:17 AM hk-imail.singtao.com