More spectrum for Hong Kong's mobile phones

With two mobile phones to every person, Hong Kong is Asia’s most “mobile” place.

The addition this month of more radio spectrum and another mobile service provider is bound to speed-up mobile services and, hopefully, improve service quality.

Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority has announced the completion of an auction of 90MHz of spectrum in the 2.3GHz band. Two existing mobile operators and one new entrant won the rights to use this spectrum.

The provisional successful bidders are China Mobile Hong Kong Company Ltd, Hutchison Telephone Company and 21 ViaNet Group, Inc.

These companies are committed to providing mobile service coverage to a minimum of half of Hong Kong’s population, or fixed-services coverage to at least 200 commercial or residential buildings within five years from the licence grant. The auction raised a total of HK$470 million for the government.

China Mobile is the first mobile network operator in Hong Kong. Hutchison Telephone offers GSM and CDMA based telecommunication services. 21Vianet is the largest Internet data center services provider in China.