Having recently returned from a holiday in the UK I can't help noticing how much Hong Kong has slipped behind the rest of the world in terms of mobile phone technology.

Throughout the UK, and I believe Australia, the United States, Canada and most of Europe, it is possible to send text messages by mobile phone to friends who subscribe to other service providers. In Hong Kong we cannot do this.

In the UK, Australia, Germany and Canada it is possible to block calls from any mobile phone after it has been reported lost or stolen. In Hong Kong the service providers will only cancel the subscriber identity module (SIM) card, not the handset. I was wondering why this is. Previously, the providers have said publicly that there is no technology that allows text messages to be sent across networks or to block a signal from a handset, so how are other countries able to do it? Do our providers genuinely not know that the technology exists?