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Consumers will be able to make better-informed choice of mobile broadband services following the publication of performance pledges by mobile network operators. This is a joint initiative of the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) and the industry aiming at increasing the transparency of the service level of and customer satisfaction with the mobile broadband service market.
The performance pledges will cover aspects such as network reliability, service restoration time, customer hotline performance, customer complaint handling and technical performance. These are areas considered to be very important or important to consumers when choosing a mobile broadband service. The pledges are the service standards which the concerned mobile network operators will use their best endeavour to meet.
CSL Limited (CSL), Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT) Limited (HKT), Hutchison Telephone Limited (Hutchison) and Smartone Mobile Communications Limited (SMC) agree to support this initiative. While China Mobile Hong Kong Limited (CMHK) presently does not provide any mobile broadband service, it has promised to join the scheme when it launches the services in due course.
"We are pleased to note that the mobile industry agrees to take part in this meaningful initiative. The published information should help consumers make better-informed choices when they decide to subscribe to a mobile broadband service," a spokesperson for OFTA said.
"The initiative should be beneficial to both the industry and consumers. On the one hand, with enhanced information available to consumers, the market may achieve higher levels of efficiency. On the other hand, increased transparency will enable the consumers to better understand the service performance of the mobile broadband services, thereby increasing the level of customer satisfaction," the spokesperson continued.
"CSL, HKT, Hutchison and SMC will publish the performance pledges on their respective websites by July 2010 and they will commence measurement in the third quarter of 2010. CMHK will join the scheme once it starts to provide mobile broadband service. Consumers may expect the first batch of performance statistics to be available by end October 2010," the spokesperson said.
More about this initiative can be found in the Telecommunications Authority's Statement on Publication of Performance Pledges of Mobile Broadband Services by Mobile Network Operators posted on OFTA's website (www.ofta.gov.hk/en/tas/mobile/ta20100312.pdf) today.
Background
In recent years, mobile broadband service has become increasingly popular. The number of third generation (3G) mobile users has increased from 2 million in December 2007 to 3.7 million in November 2009. Over the same period, the growth rate of mobile data usage has increased dramatically from 31 terabytes (TB) to 532 TB, representing an increase of more than 17-folds over a period of 23 months. With the advent of High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology, 3G phones and Universal Serial Bus (USB) dongles for connection to computers with data link speed ranging from a few megabits per second (Mbps) to more than 10 Mbps are readily available in the market. In the foreseeable future, broadband wireless access operating in the 2.5/2.6 GHz band will be introduced to the market and this will provide consumers with seamless and ubiquitous mobile broadband service at even higher speed.
Since many mobile broadband services are available in the market, consumers would like to have more information on the performance of the services offered by different operators so that they can make informed choice to select a service to suit their need and know the performance of different mobile broadband services.
Ends/Friday, March 12, 2010
Issued at HKT 19:48
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