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Opinion: PCCW exploits monopoly to overcharge, underdeliver in Sai Kung

Why should people living in rural areas of Hong Kong have to suffer such slow broadband internet speeds and pay the same, if not more, for this than urban Hongkongers with superfast connection speeds, asks Simon Parry

Remember the old days, when you tapped out a website address then wandered off to make a cup of tea and collect the post while you waited for the page to download? If that scenario makes you fuzzy and nostalgic, here's an idea - move to Sai Kung.

Hong Kong has some of the fastest broadband in the world, with peak speeds of nearly 100 megabits per second (Mbps), but in rural Sai Kung, the top speed available from sole provider PCCW is a miserly eight Mbps.

Illustration: Bay Leung
In my village, the best you can get is about 6.8 Mbps. If I have big files to send, I have to leave my computer running overnight. When I work overseas, I'm taken aback at how much faster my hotel connection is in countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia or Cambodia.

And yet we pay as much as, if not more than, customers on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon do for a connection that is 15 times faster and where competition from other service providers keeps prices down.

Anyone who wants superfast fibre-optic connections in a Sai Kung village is told by PCCW to get a group of neighbours together and pay about HK$15,000 for the connection, followed by bigger monthly bills, of course.

OK, so we choose to live in a rural area and your response might be similar to the one you'd give to the boy in sub-Saharan Africa who has to walk two hours every day to get his family a bucket of water: move closer to the well.

But when the bucket we get is 15 times shallower than the ones they hand out in town, is it reasonable or fair for PCCW to charge more for so much less?

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