Peter KF Wong, CEO of HTHK

Hong Kong is totally wired - and at the same time almost totally wireless. This may sound like a contradiction, but if you're in the telecommunications industry you know full well what that means. Hong Kong has the highest levels of broadband access and usage (wired), and mobile phone access and usage (wireless) of any urban centre in the world. Leading in one of these fields would be impressive, but leading in both puts Hong Kong in the driving seat to be innovative in new telecoms technology - especially the cutting edge convergence of the two systems - and to become a major telecommunications hub for Asia. With so much potential, and so much at stake, the telecoms industry in Hong Kong is more than just "alive and well": it is ferociously competitive and driven by innovative people. One of them is Peter K.F. Wong, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong ("HTHK"). Tradelink Talk recently had a chance to sit down with him to talk about technology, innovation and the visions and concepts that will change the world of telecoms - quite possibly with Hong Kong leading the way.

HTHK is a leading mobile and fixed-line telecommunications operator in Hong Kong. The company provides a host of innovative high-speed wireless services through the widely known "3" brand. It also operates the largest fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) telecommunications network in the territory, serving residential to multi-national corporate customers with cutting-edge value-added connectivity services through the well-established "HGC" brand. As the CEO of HTHK, Mr. Wong has a lot to share about the development of Hong Kong's telecom industry and HTHK's integral role in it.

"Because of the unique characteristics of Hong Kong as a city - its dense population and high rise buildings - we were able to afford the deployment of FTTB technology to provide the 'last mile' for all our fixed-line services. That has helped us reap the maximum benefit from a dream-world of bandwidth abundance, and given us an environment that can allow seamless collaboration between remote geographical locations," he said.

This kind of technology has a great deal of support from the government - it was a part of Hong Kong's Digital 21 policy - and puts the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region firmly in the lead for high-speed internet access.

Mr. Wong described the real benefits this offers. "Basically, it makes use of light beams to transmit large volumes of data on a single glass fibre, leveraging on advanced optical transmission and multiplexing technologies. The signal, therefore, is highly stable and error free, it has high reliability, is immune to interference, not affected by weather, and easy to upgrade to high bandwidth via the fibre network," he said.

A converging world

With high levels of both broadband penetration and mobile penetration, the next obvious step is to bring it together. This is what the industry calls "convergence" and HTHK believes it has a head start.

"Hong Kong leads the world in both broadband penetration and mobile penetration. This unique position can be preserved if the industry does a good job in realising fixed-mobile convergence and makes use of our infrastructure to develop good Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions. We shall only be limited by our imagination," he said.

This, in turn, he said, could allow Hong Kong to set the pace for the rest of Asia and possibly even the world.

"With Hong Kong's unique geographical position in Asia and as the recognised gateway into China, we could consolidate our position and become the Asia Pacific Hub. This could allow us to win out against our strongest competitors, namely the North Asia hub in Japan and the South Asia hub in Singapore," he said.

This will happen only if what is offered appeals to people and companies. There is little doubt that such a grand idea is possible, but it is certainly far too early to tell. Also, there is a great deal more work to be done. Mr Wong understands that it will all depend on people, innovation and hard work.

"Innovation comes from people, and I encourage my team to be open to all partnership possibilities. We listen and share views with our partners and potential partners. We are working with a wide range of partners to roll out innovative services to serve our targeted markets," he said.

Sales initiatives

According to Mr. Wong, all this convergence poses new challenges to the sales force. "I asked my sales team recently what they thought they were selling. Are you selling a phone? A camera? An MP3 player? A video recorder? Some of these mobile devices are in fact small PCs - now you must know the PC as well!" he said. He likes to think that his salesmen are more like consultants: they are there to help the customer with his challenges.

Those customers can range from large multi-nationals to the typical Hong Kong small or medium sized companies (SMEs), and it is the latter group that needs most help.

"The SMEs are mainly concerned with equipping themselves with the right productivity tools to compete with the large corporations. We provide them with cost-effective solutions to achieve just that. Our SME solutions are all easy to use and affordable, and we want to provide them with hassle-free implementations because we understand that most SMEs do not have a big IT team. By using our network services, our SME customers can also enjoy a wide portfolio of value-added services," he said.

SME and borderlines

The SME question is both interesting and challenging. Some small companies still use dial-up access to the internet, he said. They do not realise that broadband is not only faster and more accurate, it is also cheaper. There is, therefore, a certain amount of educational service involved in all this as well. "We must help them to understand the value that we - with the latest technology - can bring to them," he said.

One area of particular importance was communicating with China. Many factories in Shenzhen and Guangzhou are in fact owned by businesses in Hong Kong. They must be in constant contact and in the past that usually meant faxing. That is not only old technology, it is expensive and the data on the pages is subject to all kinds of errors in transmission.

"Through broadband connectivity, the SME community can communicate effectively with their business suppliers/customers, as well as teaming up with other partners to win bigger deals that they alone could not take up. With broadband as an enabling platform, our SME customers can subscribe to a portfolio of services from us to enhance productivity and customer relationship management," he said.

The importance of China cannot be underestimated, and Mr. Wong said they were quick to see the advantage of partnering with Chinese companies as well as the government.

"In 2000, we were the first Hong Kong new Fixed Telecommunication Network Services (FTNS) carrier to connect to China Telecom with 10Gbps transmission capacity. Up to now, we have a total of 22.5Gbps capacity, interconnected with China Telecom (12.5G bps) and China Netcom (10Gbps). With such excellent network expansion, our network coverage can be further extended to cover the whole of China through the bilateral cooperation with two China carriers," he said.

Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong is well aware that this is the best time to be working in this area, both technically and geographically. The future for all of us is yet to be unveiled, but if Mr. Wong's people have anything to do with it, they will not sit by and watch: they will be creating it.