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The Secretary for Information Technology and Broadcasting, Mr K C Kwong, today (Thursday) invited prospective investors wishing to provide a free TV service in Hong Kong to come up with a feasible transmission method.
He said the Government would be happy to consider the merits of each application as "our aim is to encourage the wider availability of high quality and reliable services permissible by advances in technology".
Addressing the 16th annual symposium of the Hong Kong Institute of Engineers (Electrical Division), Mr Kwong refuted recent comments criticising the Government for not opening up the free TV market.
"We had in fact explained on many occasions that because of spectrum constraint, a fifth analogue terrestrial television channel with good quality and reliable territory-wide coverage is not technically possible," he said.
"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."
Furthermore, he continued, most of the VHF frequencies have been allocated for fixed and land mobile services in Hong Kong while the remaining frequencies are being used for terrestrial television services in Guangdong. Under these circumstances, the VHF band is not suitable for terrestrial broadcasting in Hong Kong.
Mr Kwong pointed out however that free TV broadcast was not limited to terrestrial broadcasting. Satellite broadcasting and direct-to-home services, for example, are perfectly capable of providing a free TV service.
In fact, the Government has proposed in the consultation paper on the review of TV policy 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," he added.
Turning to telecommunications, Mr Kwong said Hong Kong was poised to embark on the next phase of market liberalisation - with external services to be liberalised from January 1999 and external facilities from January 2000.
He said, "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 the 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.
"As the markets liberalise, I expect the reliability of telecommunications services to be further enhanced."
He hoped to be able to announce the policy decisions on the liberalisation of the television and telecommunications markets by the end of the year.
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Note to Editors:
The Frequency Spectrum for Terrestrial TV Broadcasting Services is appended below for your reference :
General
* The television standard being used in Hong Kong is PAL (Phase Alternate Line). Each PAL television channel occupies 8 MHz. Mainland China is also using PAL system.
* In accordance with the ITU Radio Regulations, both VHF (174 - 230 MHz) and UHF (470 - 790 MHz) bands can be used for television broadcasting in Region 3 (covering both Mainland and Hong Kong).
* In some countries, terrestrial TV is supplemented by means of microwave.
UHF
* Both Hong Kong and Mainland China use the UHF band for television broadcasting. There are 40 TV channels (Channel 21 - 60) available for use in the UHF band.
* In accordance with the agreement with Guangdong, the 40 UHF television channels are basically shared equally between Hong Kong and Guangdong, implying that Hong Kong has priority to use 20 channels. This is a fair principle which follows international practice. Each side will have equal opportunity of using the radio spectrum.
* Hong Kong may also use the other 20 channels provided that no interference to Mainland will occur. The implication is that these frequency channels can only be used for low-power transposers and will not be able to offer a territory wide TV service.
* The technical criteria and procedures for co-ordination between Hong Kong and Guangdong have been set out in detail in the agreement.
* In order to provide a territory wide coverage, several main high-power transposers at hill-tops together with a number of low power transposers are required.
* At present the frequency channels used by major transposers are -
Temple Hill - Channel 21, 23,
25, 27
Castle Peak, Kowloon Peak, Stanley Channel 34, 38,
42, 44
Golden Hill, Brick Hill, Potinger Peak Channel 33, 39,
43, 45
Cloudy Hill, Lamma Island, Caldecott Road - Channel 49,
51, 53, 55
Chai Wan, Mt Nicholson, Robin's Nest Channel 48,
50, 52, 54
* Digital TV may accept more interference than analogue TV from co-channels and adjacent channels. Therefore it is highly possible that some frequency channels may be found for this propose (coloured yellow in the diagram). We plan to engage a consultant to confirm and study this in more detail.
VHF
* In Hong Kong, the VHF band (174 - 230 MHz) is currently allocated for fixed and land mobile services. Only the frequency band 197.5 - 215 MHz is vacant. However, this band is being used for terrestrial television services in Guangdong. The VHF band is therefore not suitable for use for terrestrial television broadcasting in Hong Kong.
18 GHz, 23 GHz or 29 GHz
* In some countries, microwave at 18, 23 and 29 GHz are used for offering TV services to localised areas. But translation at the rooftop by a converter is needed before signal can be received by an ordinary TV set. In most cases this is used for pay services rather than free. Technically speaking it can be used for free TV services. However, we need to determine the proportion of allocation for TV versus that for other telecommunications services.
End/Thursday, October 15, 1998
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