ENG-1995 — Page 382

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COMMUNICATIONS AND THE MEDIA

Telephone Company Limited (HKTC), Hutchison Communications Limited, New T & T Hong Kong Limited and New World Telephone Limited. As HKTC was the incumbent service provider, it was charged with a universal service obligation under its FTNS licence to provide a good, efficient and continuous basic service to all persons in Hong Kong.

HKTC's local telephone charges are regulated by a price-capping arrangement in force since 1993. Any annual increase was limited to four per cent below the prevailing rate of inflation. This tariff-control mechanism will continue while HKTC remains the dominant operator in the provision of local telephonic services.

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A new eight-digit numbering system was implemented in January 1995. For residential and business telephone and facsimile lines, the change involved only the addition of a '2' in front of the previous numbers. Number portability was also introduced in mid-95 enabling users to keep their telephone numbers when they move home or office address or when they switch to another telephone service provider. Telephone numbers for paging services were changed in October 1995, unifying the previous seven to nine digit numbers to eight digits beginning with '7'.--

Other Local Fixed Telecommunications Network Services

Many facsimile and data communication services are available in Hong Kong. By the end of 1995, there were more than 269 000 dedicated facsimile lines. The growth rate was about half per cent per month. HKTC also operates a public switched data network called Datapak which enables terminals and computers to communicate economically within Hong Kong and overseas. The new FTNS licensees are also permitted to provide these services in competition with HKTC.

International Telecommunications Services

Under an exclusive licence until September 2006, Hong Kong Telecom International Limited (HKTI) is responsible for the provision of certain external circuits and services, including external public telephone services, facsimile, data and television connections, plus the domestic and international telex and telegram services, inter- national private leased circuits, and shore-to-ship and ground-to-air communica- tions from Hong Kong. The company also provides international gateways and operational support for a wide range of value-added telecommunications services, such as electronic mail, database access and video-conferencing.

The FTNS operators are interconnected to HKTI's international gateways so that customers may have easy access to a variety of international telecommunications access services, regardless of which operator's service they choose.

Among the international telecommunications services, the International Direct Dialling (IDD) service was the most popular and handled over 80 per cent of outgoing international telephone traffic in 1995. It was available to 230 countries and more than 1 100 cities in China. In 1995, international telephone traffic grew by 15 per cent to 3 025 million minutes. IDD charges — already relatively competitive with those in other countries in the region - were reduced by an average of two per cent in August, making a total reduction of 12 per cent over the past three years.

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