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Clear Channel on Personal Communications Services

The Acting Governor, Mr Donald Tsang, today (Saturday) welcomed the Joint Liaison Group's agreement to the issue of six Personal Communications Services (PCS) licences in Hong Kong.

"This is a most welcome development which will enable a significant expansion of the territory's telecommunications market," he said.

"Issue of the licences will allow the successful bidders to make investments of more than HK$6 billion in aggregate over the next few years and will lead to the creation of more than 2,500 new jobs in the telecommunications industry."

"I am pleased to see such a boost being given to our economy at this significant point in Hong Kong's history," Mr Tsang added.

The six successful bidders are Hutchison Telephone Company Limited, Mandarin Communications Limited, New World PCS Limited, P-Plus Communications Limited, Pacific Link Communications Limited and People's Telephone Company Limited.

The Telecommunications Authority (TA) will get in touch with these companies to finalise the formalities for the issue of the licences within the next few weeks.

Also welcoming the agreement, the Secretary for Economic Services, Mr Stephen Ip, said: "For consumers, the new PCS licences will mean more choice in mobile telephony suppliers with several new companies joining the existing field of four cellular suppliers.

"With the rapid growth in the number of customers, which now exceed one million, the market requires more suppliers and we believe that this will lead to healthy competition resulting in substantial benefits to the consumers.

"Consumers would benefit in lower customer charges and improved service

quality."

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"The six PCS licences were hotly contested by fourteen bidders. successful bidders have offered prices which are considerably lower than existing cellular prices and improved quality of service," he said.