ENG-1990 — Page 358

COMMUNICATIONS AND THE MEDIA

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out by the branch is the management of the radio spectrum to ensure that it is utilised efficiently. It also co-ordinates with the administrations of adjacent territories the sharing of the radio spectrum without causing radio interference.

Under the Telecommunication Ordinance, the branch issues licences for all forms of radio communication in Hong Kong. It conducts examinations of radio operating personnel and issues certificates to suitably qualified persons in compliance with the Inter- national Radio Regulations. It also inspects radio and radar stations on ships.

The branch provides advisory and planning services for the communication require- ments of government departments and subvented institutions, co-ordinates and regulates the use of radio communication sites, monitors the technical performance of broadcast services and investigates complaints concerning reception quality.

Postal Services

The Hong Kong Post Office provides an efficient and reliable postal service. Two mail deliveries are provided each weekday in the commercial and industrial areas and one delivery in the residential areas in the territory. Despite an increase of over five per cent in mail traffic handled during the year, the Post Office continued to achieve its target of delivering most local letters no later than one working day after the date of posting. Bulk postings or second-class mail take another two to three days to deliver. Outward airmail is despatched overseas within 24 hours.

The Post Office achieved a new milestone on July 9 with the commissioning of the $120 million mechanised letter sorting system. The system is the first in the world to use modern Optical Character Recognition and Video Coding technology to sort mail items directly, without requiring the sender to use a postcode or zipcode. The optical character recogni- tion equipment can read a typed or printed Hong Kong address and print a bar code on the envelope corresponding to the postman's delivery area. Letters with addresses which cannot be read by the optical character recognition equipment, including all hand- written addresses, are transmitted on screen to video coding desks where operators read the address and type the abbreviated codes on the envelopes. Thereafter all subsequent sorting processes can be done automatically by letter-sorting machines. The through- put of each machine is about 30 000 items per hour. By comparison the throughput of the manual sorting system is about 1 000 items per hour per sorting staff. The system is designed to handle about 90 per cent of the total letter mail traffic.

In 1990, the Post Office handled a total of 870 million letters and parcels (a daily average of 2.38 million), representing an increase of 5.3 per cent over 1989. Approximately 8 588 tonnes of letter mail and 5 194 tonnes of parcels were despatched abroad by air, an overall increase of 12.1 per cent on 1989.

The Speedpost service, which provides a fast and reliable door-to-door collection and delivery service for customers sending time-sensitive documents, samples and merchandise, continued to grow significantly. The service is now available to 60 countries, including all Hong Kong's major trading partners such as Australia, Canada, China, France, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Germany. During the year, 3.3 million items were handled, an increase of 14 per cent over 1989. This volume was second only to the United States Postal Service last year.

In view of the continued development and expansion of new towns and the growth in demand for postal facilities, five post offices were opened during the year, bringing the total