HONG KONG—Hong Kong’s telecom regulator has asked for comments on its proposal to reduce mobile carrier license fees beginning in May.
The country’s Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau has proposed reducing the fee from HK$30 (US$3.85) to HK$25 (US$3.20) per mobile station per year, in addition to reducing the fee paid for public radio communications services licenses and for public nonexclusive telecommunications service licenses.
“We expect that paging companies, radiolocation service operators, trunked radio operators and mobile virtual network operators will benefit from the proposed fee reduction,” said a spokesman for the bureau.
However, apart from introducing the lower fee for mobile operators, the government will calculate the amount of license fees payable by the operators based on total number of customers, postpaid or prepaid, versus the current method of calculating fees based only on postpaid customers. Hong Kong has seen a surge in prepaid users, increasing from 42,335 in 1997 to more than 1 million in 2000.
“We seek to come up with a full proposal that best helps the mobile operators,” the spokesman said. “As the license fee payable by mobile operators will be more or less the same as before, we do not expect consumers to be affected by the change.”
Comments are due by 1 February.
