Telco's charges for such circuits. However, as Telco would retain its monopoly over the public voice telephone service, and would be able to continue to develop its own broadband network to meet consumer demands,
demands, it should be in a strong position to defend its revenue from these sources and even improve it. If and when the provision of leased circuits becomes competitive, it may be appropriate to withdraw them from the existing Scheme of Control Agreement.
Disruption to the public
21
With regard to Telco's claim that its network is capable of being upgraded to a full broadband network, PMG has advised that
that only 0.5% of the total cables required for a broadband network throughout Hong Kong exist in the current Telco network. The remaining 99.5% of required cables need to be installed in ducts from exchanges to subscribers' buildings (7.5% of the total), and inside buildings either in ducts or wall-mounted (92% of the total).* The extent to which Telco can use its existing ducts to draw through the cabling required for a broadband network is less clear. substantial extra ducting is required, then inevitably the installation of a broadband network by Telco will involve higher costs and a greater degree of public disruption than is asserted by Telco.
22
If
Based on information provided by Telco on 6 of its 67 exchange areas, the PMG has conducted an investigation of Telco's claim that it has sufficient spare duct capacity to accommodate over 95% of the cables required for its proposed broadband network. Telco has only been able to supply analysis of the raw data, and then only partial, for three of the six sample areas : Mongkok, North Point, and Mid-Levels. For the remaining three areas only the raw data without analysis has been supplied to the PMG. Telco claims that a reasonable analysis of the raw data involves a large amount of working time. The corollary of this is perhaps that Telco's claims regarding the capability of its existing ducts to accommodate cable television cables presently might be based more on guesswork than actual analysis.
Note* These figures are based on the assumption that nearly
every building would be served by the cable television. network and differ from those given by HCV in paragraph 12 above because HCV's figures are based on the assumption that only 45% of buildings would be served.
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