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The following is a speech by Secretary for Information Technology & Broadcasting, Mr K C Kwong to the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers - Electrical Division, at the 16th Annual Symposium 98 today (Thursday):
It is an honour for me to have been invited to deliver the keynote speech for your symposium "Reliability - An Engineering Excellence".
It is a sign of the general engineering excellence of our times that for me, as for many lay people, reliability is not something we have to think about. We expect our electricity supply to be reliable, our mass transportation systems to be reliable, our telecommunications services to be reliable - to name but three areas within your purview, to a greater or lesser extent. Should there be a fault, an interruption in supply, the public raises an outcry. This is all to the good as it shows the high level of people's confidence in the reliability of the systems and keeps you, the engineers, on your toes. We cannot afford in the information age to have power outages. The brownouts which were experienced in some places in the early eighties and which are still experienced by some of our neighbouring cities, and, worse, the power breakdown recently experienced in Auckland, New Zealand would pose serious problems to an information city like Hong Kong.
Power is vital for an information city and so are telecommunications. The service-based economy of Hong Kong depends on the availability of reliable telecommunications services at affordable prices. The Telecommunications Authority, as regulator of the telecommunications industry, does monitor the quality of services provided by the licensed operators, including their reliability. Reliability among telecommunications operators in Hong Kong is very high. However, another important mechanism to enhance reliability is through competition. Competition will ensure that operators will continually maintain and upgrade their quality of service in order to compete in the marketplace. Competition will also spur operators to adopt modern but proven technologies that meet the expectations of users. More players in the market means that users will have more choice of services and be able to implement diversity measures to improve reliability.
Since the early eighties, the Government has progressively opened various sectors of the telecommunications industry to competition. The last major phases of liberalisation were the introduction of local fixed network competition in 1995 and the licensing of additional mobile phone networks in 1996. Hong Kong now has one of the most competitive and vibrant telecommunications markets in the world.
With the early termination of the exclusive licence of Hong Kong Telecom International Limited on 31 March 1998, Hong Kong is poised to embark on the next phase of market liberalisation. External services will be liberalised as from January 1999 and external facilities from January 2000. We have just finished a consultation exercise on the extent of that further liberalisation in both the external and local markets. We are also looking to implement a series of measures to enhance competition in the local fixed network market. These include setting of a fair local access charge to provide incentives for fixed network operators to continue to develop their local fixed networks, amendments to the Telecommunication Ordinance to strengthen provisions on fair competition and interconnection, and measures to facilitate access of network and mobile operators to users in buildings. By the end of the year, I expect to be able to announce the outcome of our public consultation.
As the markets liberalise, I expect the reliability of telecommunications services to be further enhanced.
In parallel with the consultation exercise on the telecommunications market, we have one on the liberalisation of the television market. Again, we expect to announce the policy decisions by the end of the year. We are looking to implement a package of proposals to enhance competition in the TV market as well and, in the process, provide the widest possible choice of quality services to the public.
There is one area of our proposals which has received some misguided comments of late and I would like to use this opportunity to clarify the situation. The comments relate to why the Government is not proposing to open up the free TV market in our consultation paper. We had in fact explained on many occasions that because of spectrum constraint, a fifth analogue terrestrial television channel with territory-wide coverage is not technically possible. At present, the 20 UHF TV channels available for broadcasting use in Hong Kong have all been used up by the four existing TV channels.
Questions have also been raised as to whether the VHF band could be used for TV broadcasting. At present, most of the VHF frequencies have been allocated in Hong Kong for fixed and land mobile services. The remaining frequencies are being used for terrestrial television services in Guangdong. Under these circumstances, the VHF band is not suitable for providing good and reliable broadcasting in Hong Kong.
In our consultation paper on the review of TV policy, we have made it clear that our policy objective is to create an environment conducive to the development of the broadcasting industry in Hong Kong. In so far as market demands exist and the advance of technologies allows, we believe that no artificial limits should be set for the number of players in the field. That is why we have proposed to start trials on digital TV broadcast in Hong Kong.
We have proposed a licensing framework for television programme services which is technology and transmission neutral. This proposed regime would open up many new opportunities for prospective investors. It really will be up to an applicant to propose a technically feasible transmission method to deliver its proposed programme service, whether free or pay. Free-to-air TV is not limited to terrestrial broadcasting. Satellite broadcasting and direct-to-home services, for example, are perfectly capable of providing a free TV service. The Government would be happy to consider the merits of each application. Our aim is to encourage the wider availability of high quality and reliable services permissible by advances in technology.
Back to the question of reliability, I wish to conclude by pointing out that while it is an important subject for us all, it is one usually taken for granted. I commend the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers for organising the Symposium so as to bring home the need to properly address this subject. I am sure you will have a fruitful and meaningful exchange of ideas today.
Thank you.
End/Thursday, October 15, 1998
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