increase their overall business sales
provide a wider range of choice for consumers
enable them to set their prices according to market forces rather than have them regulated by the Government.
Even though HKT and CSL have lost market share to other equipment suppliers, the business is growing so rapidly that their own expansion still seems guaranteed. The forecasts for the future indicate that there will be a very high rate of growth in international and value added services and that Hong Kong will have a special role to play as a regional centre offering services to other parts of Asia and China. Hong Kong's success as a financial, trading, tourism and manufacturing centre will be critically dependent on its ability to communicate quickly and efficiently with its partners. These sectors are spending more and more on communications and they look to the Government and to the telecommunications carriers and providers to create an environment conducive to change and development. Exhibit 2.23 highlights the important contribution to GDP made by these key sections and the fact that they are the very same sectors which have spent proportionately more on telecommunications in order to remain competitive in international markets. The existing policy and infrastructure for telecommunications development is coming under increasing pressure from several factors:
the pace of technological change is outstripping the ability of the regulatory arrangements to accommodate it
telecommunications and data processing technology are encouraging, and the demand for new services combining voice telephony with data and video is accelerating
there are falling real costs for many CPE and VANS products, and even in basic services for long distance transmission and certain switching function costs are falling
there is a need to keep abreast of world trends in
telecommunications to avoid falling behind the key markets with which Hong Kong competes.
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