In France, the original 'Plan Cable', forecast 14 million homes would be linked to optical fibres at a cost of HK$65 billion. It was an ambitious concept with provisions to provide data and information services alongside cable through the telephone systems, rather as is envisaged in Hong Kong. Concern for the high cost of the Plan however, delayed construction and it was then superceded by the deregulation and privatisation measures for broadcasting introduced by President Mitterand in 1985. Since then the carefully planned development of cable has been thrown into complete turmoil. There are a few major cable 'experiments' that remain, but it is now unlikely that France will reach its target of cabling 50% of the country by 1995. Paris Cable has nevertheless achieved a 12% penetration rate after only one year which is comparable to the figure projected for Hong Kong. While Paris represents the largest optical cable project in Europe, West Berlin probably represents the most ambitious. It started off with 200,000 coaxial connections and 710,000 homes passed. It now has a 36% penetration rate and offers 21 television and 21 radio channels and plans to introduce a wider range of interactive services based on extensive optical cabling in the future.
They already offer an advanced videotext information service linked by PCs. West Berlin, however is a rather special case given the unique position of the city and its isolation from the rest of Western Europe. Elsewhere in Germany cable uptake has been rather slow. In 1984, the Bundespost was forced to start subsidising the cable building programme, connection charges were reduced from HK$1,840 to HK$1,380 per connection and to HK$920 for new dwellings. Furthermore the ambitious cable plans in West Germany are also now threatened by the provision of radio spectrum for local terrestrial broadcast channels which has wider coverage and is cheaper than delivery by cable. Another problem in Europe has been that cable channels simply do not have the programming resources of the national broadcasters. In many instances their programme content and quality cannot compete with the high budget films and dramas of terrestrial broadcasting which has large country-wide audiences.
The lessons for Hong Kong cannot easily be drawn directly from these experiences in the United States and Europe, however four key points do emerge :
cable is a relatively expensive broadcast delivery method and is vulnerable to being superceded by newer and cheaper methods of delivery such as direct broadcast by satellite or by the discovery of unused radio spectrum for broadcast transmissions
higher penetration rates are achieved where the build rate is driven by the market forces and commercial operators rather than by PTT directives
once the audience have the cable running alongside their homes and are aware of the programming choice and value that it can bring, penetration rates can rise rapidly towards the 30%-40% levels.
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