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SCMP Reporter

A COMPANY controlled by the family of Li Ka-shing has vowed to fight the Canadian Government's order to shut down an upstart, low-cost television distribution service in Vancouver.

Last week the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) outlawed the service by Pacific Place Communications (PPC) because it was foreign-owned and, according to the CRTC, operating an illegal broadcasting company.

PPC is owned jointly by a Li Ka-shing company, Concord Pacific Developments and the local telephone utility BC Telecom Inc, a subsidiary of American-owned GTE Corp.

A spokesman for the privately-owned Concord Pacific, Blair Hagkull confirmed that the Li family was its controlling shareholder, and that other Hong Kong and Asian interests were involved.

These other shareholders included the family headed by K M Hui which was based in Hong Kong and British Columbia, and the Lin family of Taiwan headed by matriarch Hung Kuo-lin.

Terry Hui, of Vancouver, is company president.

Concord is developing the former 1986 Expo worlds fair site in downtown Vancouver, where it plans to build 10,000 condominium units. It describes the C$3 billion (about HK$17.13 billion) project as 'the largest urban redevelopment in North America'.

According to Concord, it also is the first large residential and business development in the world to be wired completely with fibre-optic technology.

PPC has provided television channels from around the world for about 20 months to about 900 condominium owners within the Concord redevelopment.

It offers more channels at less than half the cost of the menu provided by Canada's monopoly cable television provider, Rogers Communications Inc.

PPC said it provided a master antenna television (MATV) but the CRTC found it was an illegal broadcaster and ordered it to shut down the service within 90 days.

The CRTC said antennas for an MATV must be built on the property of apartment-tower owners if they were to feed services to the residents.

PPC said some of its antennas were on the Concord buildings and that it also used 'a distant headland' at Haney, 39 kilometres east of the Concord site, in order to capture the best possible signals.

Mr Hagkull said: 'We are determined that the service will stay in place. We are committed to offering the service.' He said that within 10 years, half of all workers would work out of their homes or would bring work home.

It was 'senseless', he said, to shut down the project. 'We know that our operation is the wave of the future,'.

He said the CRTC was out of touch with the sentiments of the public.

The PPC service was higher quality, cheaper, and better-maintained than the Rogers CATV service, he said, but represented 'less than one-tenth of one per cent of the Rogers market'. here.

 What the CRTC did was an interesting example of Canadian 'regulated competition', Mr Hagkull said.

'We say that when the CRTC held a hearing on the matter, it was conducted by people without an open mind.' In this clash, PPC - despite the clout of its owners - is cast publicly as a David against the Goliath of Rogers Communications, a Toronto-based company which Vancouver people love to hate.

In January, Rogers sent workers to the Concord Pacific site to, at the very least, inspect the PACC equipment intimately.

At least 10 Rogers-owned vans circled a 400-suite Concord condominium tower, like plains indians around westward-bound wagons.

The Rogers technicians told the building manager that Li Ka-shing had agreed to let them into the building.

When told to push off, they disappeared underground, scuttling down manholes into a tunnel which houses Rogers communications equipment, outside the Concord site.

In May, the CRTC recommended that BC Telecom be allowed to stay in the broadcast business only if 51 per cent owner GTE Inc, of Connecticut, reduced its interest to 20 per cent.

By that ruling, to be able to fight Rogers head-to-head within Rogers territory, the service must become 80 per cent Canadian-owned.

So for Li Ka-shing and GTE Corp, what's the point? 



Li company takes on Canada over TV service