HK phone bills among cheapest
Hong Kong may be well known for being one of the world's expensive cities, but its telephone bills are among the cheapest.
Our phone bills are a small fraction of what is charged in six major cities of the world, according to a survey commissioned by the Office of the Telecommunications Authority.
An international consultant carried out the study in September in Hong Kong, New York, London, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Singapore and Shanghai. Teligen Division of Strategy Analytics looked into the charges for land lines, cellphones, broadband and pay-TV services.
It found Hong Kong users generally pay the lowest telecommunication charges.
An average residential user in Hong Kong pays HK$60 for a land line each month, which is 8 to 45 per cent of what users in the other six cities would pay.
The city's mobile phone users also pay 10 to 48 per cent the price of their counterparts in the other cities.
Hong Kong's home broadband users only pay a quarter of what Singaporean home broadband users pay per month.
But the city's mobile broadband service - at HK$200 a month - is the second most expensive, just a little cheaper than New York.
Some Hong Kong businesses only pay 12 to 32 per cent of what users in the other six cities pay for their phone bills.
But the study found Hong Kong's business broadband services are more expensive.
'While our business fixed broadband charges are relatively more expensive, this has been offset by our low fixed voice tariff and competitive charges of the leased lines, thereby contributing to an overall low-cost telecommunications environment for the business sector in Hong Kong,' an Ofta spokesman said.
Ofta also commissioned similar studies in 2003, 2005 and 2008.
The studies indicate Hong Kong has enjoyed some of the world's cheapest telecommunication services in the past decade.