their own sets. Apart from the sets rented from HKT, CSL supplies about 85% of all telephone sets; several larger suppliers account for another 10% and a multitude of small agents sell a wide variety of different models. One new market entrant admitted that it would not wish to take too much market share away from CSL for fear of a price war. Its strategy was therefore "to maintain a low share and to concentrate effort on increasing margin". In the UK, BT lost a larger share (40%) of the telephone handset market following deregulation but this may have been because it is a much larger and more lucrative market to enter than Hong Kong. As in the UK the price of sets has fallen in real terms (as shown in Exhibit 2.13). The range of telephone sets and the attachments, designs, colours and capabilities have multiplied over the past 5 years (see Exhibits 2.14 and 2.15).
2.4.3 Key systems, PBXS and PABXS
Following deregulation CSL inherited a large number of HKT customers renting key telephone systems. CSL's share of the market fell from 100% to 70% in just four years but owing to the growth of new businesses and a high level of demand of some 12,000 new systems per year, CSL's total key system sales have still expanded.
PABXS were always provided by companies other than the licensed telecommunications carriers in Hong Kong even before liberalization.
2.4.4 Data, value added and mobile services
The provision of data, value added and mobile services in Hong Kong was liberalized in 1983, and the market for services delivered locally has expanded rapidly. HKT supplies analogue and digital leased lines and datel service for permanent and circuit switched (on demand) connection of data communicating devices. HKT also provides the Datapak service for the local packet switched service. International leased, circuit switched and packet switched data transmission is available via CWHK facilities.
There are three main forms of mobile communication available for commercial or personal use: private mobile radio (PMR), cellular radio telephone services, and radiopaging. Hong Kong's current level of usage of all three systems is high by world standards, with some 30,000 portable and mobile phones and 370,000 radiopagers in use. These totals have grown rapidly and are continuing to grow. (See Exhibit 2.16).
Value added services are defined as any service which uses a basic telecommunications service and, by adding data processing, extra facilities or access to databases, adds value to that service. Value added services always use as input basic voice, data, text or mobile services. They have been devised spanning a wide range of applications, though only a minority of those now available on the world scale have so far been made available in Hong Kong.
Value added services cover a wide range of applications and may usefully be classified into two forms :
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