XN000022-1997-01-07 — Page 27

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Licensing of cordless access service deferred

The Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) announced today (Tuesday) that the licensing of cordless access service (CAS) as public telecommunication services will be deferred.

"The Telecommunications Authority (TA) has decided to defer the licensing of CAS as public telecommunication services," said a spokesman for OFTA.

"The situation would be reviewed in 12 months' time. We shall then decide whether to invite new applications having regard to the then prevailing market environment."

The decision was made after consulting the eligible applicants.

"The deferral should not be interpreted as a lack of investment interest in this sector of the telecommunications industry of Hong Kong," the spokesman said.

"The prevailing market conditions simply do not favour the launch of the lower mobility public CAS at this point in time."

Technological developments in the CAS are not yet mature enough for the technology to be fully deployed as a public mobile service in Hong Kong.

In particular, the development of CAS dual-mode handsets which forms a crucial part of the CAS business plans in the Hong Kong environment has been delayed. The significant reduction in both handset price and air-time charges of mobile telephones makes CAS less competitive in the prevailing mobile phone market.

The TA invited applications in November 1994 for the grant of up to four licences for the provision of CAS in Hong Kong. Six applications were received by the closing date of June 30, 1995.

Processing of CAS applications had to put on hold until the licences for personal communications services (PCS) were granted, so as to assess the changes to the mobile telecommunications market brought about by PCS licensing.

The CAS technologies will in the meantime be permitted to be used in Hong Kong for private applications such as cordless telephones at homes and wireless telephone/data systems in offices.

End