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Cheung: focusing on change and innovation
01 July 1999
As price discounting intensifies for international telephony and mobile in Hong Kong, the former incumbent has been leveraging its advanced broadband network to derive revenues from multi-media services. In a recent rebranding exercise it was renamed Cable & Wireless HKT to reflect the operator's global ambitions. CEO Linus Cheung talks to Global Telecoms Business about this move and other developments.
The incumbent telco in Hong Kong, Hongkong Telecom, reached an
agreement with the government in January 1998 to relinquish its
monopoly on international direct dial calls on March 31 1998, in
return for a cash payment of HK$6.7 billion ($863 million). In
addition, competing international simple resale voices have been
permitted since January 1 1999. Full facilities-based competition
will be allowed as of January 1 2000.
The operator has tried to stay ahead of the competition, building
an advanced broadband network and focusing on multi-media. Lloyd
Fischer, a telecoms analyst at Salomon, Smith & Barney,
comments: "I think that they were one of the first to realize that
the markets were going to change and that the emphasis would shift
from high, monopoly margin businesses to other areas. I don't think
that many operators in the region had thought that far ahead."
According to Fischer, the operator...
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