TNAG-2277-FCO40-3276-Hong-Kong-and-the-media-1991 — Page 4

CONFIDENTIAL

XCC(91)144,

being. The Attorney General's Chambers has advised that an amendment to the Licence would now be necessary to provide for such a sound service to be part of the "Service" that is licensed. An alternative would be for HV to uplink WSR as a third party carrier, though this would still require licence changes. However, to permit this would leave the way open for the unregulated uplinking of third party signals free of the control of the various codes of practice imposed on HV, and would represent also a significant departure from the rights associated with the exclusive licence granted to HKTI to carry third party signals.

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The Attorney General's Chambers has advised that, additionally, a direction will need to be made to HKTI pursuant to paragraphs (k) and (1) of the First Schedule to the HKTI licence to allow HV to downlink (ie. receive) as well as uplink (ie. transmit) sound signals which would otherwise be part of HKTI's exclusive international licence even though, for technical reasons, it is not possible for HKTI to uplink radio signals on these particular sub- carriers.

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The Administration has no objections to the uplinking of WSR on the TV sub-carriers as proposed by HV. Most of the signals to be uplinked, including those in Cantonese, are already widely received in Hong Kong, either on RTHK Radio 6 or short wave, and so their availability via satellite would not change our radio broadcasting environment at all. Furthermore, since it is not possible technically for HKTI to uplink on these sub-carriers, we believe that uplinking by HV is a more efficient use of the spectrum and does not constitute a loss of business for HKTI.

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HV also proposes to receive (downlink) the WSR programmes using its own facilities without using the services of HKTI. HV is already permitted under the existing licence to downlink WSTV programmes for its television services. HV proposes to use the spare capacity of the television downlink channel to carry the feed of the WSR programmes. We have no objection to this approach as it is more economical for HV to do so and this also does not constitute a significant loss of business for HKTI.