****************************************************
The Telecommunications Authority (TA) announced today (October 19) its decision to deploy a single, streamlined licensing regime for regulation of all service-based public telecommunications services.
At present, there are two licensing regimes, namely the Public Non-Exclusive Telecommunications Services (PNETS) Licence and Service-based Operators (SBO) Licence, for regulating the service-based public telecommunications services. Services provided under these two licences include, among others, external telecommunications services, Internet access and Internet Protocol (IP) telephony services. In March this year, the TA consulted the industry on the proposal to streamline the regulatory framework by merging the two licensing regimes.
"The merging of the two existing PNETS and SBO licences enables the use of one single licence with harmonised licence conditions and fees for regulating all the relevant public telecommunications services. From the feedback that we have received, the proposed arrangement is in general well received by the industry. Accordingly the TA decided to implement the proposal by subsuming the PNETS Licence under the SBO Licence," a spokesman for the Office of the Telecommunications Authority said.
"The new licensing regime will be implemented starting from October 30, 2009. We will gradually replace all existing PNETS and SBO licences with the new one and the whole exercise is expected to take one year to complete," the spokesman added.
Background:
The PNETS licence was introduced in 1980s and it has been used to regulate eight categories of services, namely external telecommunications service, international value-added network service, miscellaneous value-added services, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service, private payphone service, public radio communications relay service (Radio Relay), security and fire alarm signals transmission service and teleconferencing service. Provision of local voice telephony service is not allowed under the PNETS licence except local mobile voice service under the MVNO licence.
The SBO licence was introduced by the TA in January 2006 to regulate emerging local voice telephony services using new technology like IP telephony. Under the SBO licence, provision of PNETS other than MVNO and Radio Relay services is allowed.
Under the new licensing regime, service providers may be authorised under one licence to provide a variety of telecommunications services to both fixed and mobile customers with a set of single and harmonised licence conditions in lieu of multiple sets of licence conditions previously applied for PNETS and SBO licensees.
After the new SBO Licence comes into effect, the TA will no longer issue or renew any PNETS licence. Existing PNETS and SBO licences (with the total number exceeding 500) will remain in force until their next anniversary date when they will be replaced by the new SBO Licence.
Ends/Monday, October 19, 2009
Issued at HKT 15:04
NNNN
