Hong Kong GSM mobile telephone operator SmarTone is spending $600 million this year to boost subscriber numbers by more than 100,000 to 300,000, or 25 per cent of the market, says recently appointed chief executive Hubert Ng Ching-wah.
SmarTone is owned by Sun Hung Kai Properties, with 40 per cent of the shares, AT&T Wireless Communications, with a 30 per cent stake, local paging operator ABC Communications, with 15 per cent and the Chinese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications offshoot Town Khan, which holds 15 per cent.
'As soon as I arrived, my first priority was to boost capacity,' said Mr Ng, who was previously a director of Hongkong Telecom CSL.
Mr Ng said SmarTone had suffered in the past from the perception that its GSM digital network did not have the coverage or quality of competitors, notably his former employers. There are four GSM digital network operators in Hong Kong - CSL, Hutchison, PacificLink and SmarTone.
SmarTone was first to launch a service in March 1993 and started with significantly less frequency capacity than other firms but has been given incremental increases each year.
'SmarTone has always been constrained by capacity,' Mr Ng said. 'But changes in technology are helping.' The firm has had net subscriber growth of 10,000 a month in the first four months of the year and Mr Ng said that the 'churn' rate of customers dropping the service was less than 1 per cent a month.