ENG-2010 — Page 426

360 Communications, the Media and Information Technology

offering feature-rich triple and quadruple play products through an assortment of fixed and mobile telephony services, broadband internet access (wireline and Wi-Fi) and Internet Protocol-based TV (IPTV).

The Government introduced in 2008

introduced in 2008 a Unified Carrier Licence (UCL), a streamlined and flexible single licence that allows operators to run fixed, mobile and converged services at a time when distinctions between fixed and mobile networks have become blurred.

To facilitate the industry's smooth migration to NGN, the OFTA has formed a working group to discuss with stakeholders issues relating to NGN.

External Telecommunications Facilities and Services

The external telecommunications facilities market was liberalised fully in 2000. By December 2010, 40 licensees were authorised to provide cable-based and/or non-cable-based external telecommunications facilities, eight of which were permitted to provide local fixed network services. Hong Kong has six submarine cable landing stations and is connected to nine regional and trans-Pacific submarine cable systems. It is also connected to the Mainland's three overland cable networks The external telecommunications facilities' total capacity in December 2010 was over 4 378 Gbps.

Satellite Communications

Two Hong Kong companies, APT Satellite Company Limited and Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Limited, are licensed to operate and provide satellite communication services. At the end of the year, they were operating nine satellites.

Combating Unsolicited Electronic Messages (UEMs)

The UEM Ordinance regulates the sending of commercial electronic messages (CEMs), including fax, pre-recorded voice calls, short messages and emails. Under it, senders of CEMs are required to comply with specific rules, governing among other things the provision of accurate sender information and an unsubscribe facility in the message. Three do-not-call registers (DNCs) for fax, short message and pre-recorded telephone message respectively have been established. Senders are prohibited from sending CEMs to the DNC-registered numbers, without the consent of the number's registered user. By December 31, 2010, there were more than 2.16 million registrations in the three DNC registers, with some 634 000 numbers for fax, 536 000 for short messages and 989 000 for pre-recorded messages.

Since the commencement of the UEM Ordinance in 2007, the TA has received over 17 000 reports of suspected contraventions and issued 303 warning letters to senders. The number of reports fell from 6 100 in 2009 to around 3 100 in 2010, due probably to better understanding of the UEM Ordinance.

The HKSAR Government continues to work with other countries and regions to combat spam, or unsolicited e-mails sent indiscriminately. These countries and regions include Australia, South Korea, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Mainland.