Asian telecoms couldn't give a fig for 3G

NEWS Hong Kong has been forced to give away its 3G licences due to lack of interest from the telecom crowd in Asia. The Hong Kong government handed out the four licences to the companies for a price of HKD50m (£4m) per year because only four companies applied for the four licenses. Michelle de Lussanet, telecoms analyst at Forrester Research, said: "The uptake of mobile is no longer seen as a short boom. Telco's need to realise earnings from their investments and the greater risks involved in not being able to achieve this for at least five years has made 3G an unwise decision from a business point of view." Hutchinson Telecom, CSL (owned by Telstra and PCCW) and SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings were the big players on the giveaway list and Hong Kong's smallest operator with just 485,000 users, Sunday Communications, won the fourth. Lussanet added: "Those companies that have taken a licence got a much better deal than if there had been an auction." The Hong Kong market has one of the highest market penetrations of mobile equipment in the globe with 80 per cent.