The territory's Telecom Users Group is deadlocked over proposals to reform the charging structure for local calls issued recently by the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (Ofta).
Group chairman Peter Mahoney said he had changed his mind about charging for time spent on local calls after initially agreeing with the idea.
'At face value I thought yes, there is a lot of sense there, but after thinking it through, particularly the impact to business, I really have difficulty with time-charging of calls in a Hong Kong environment,' he said.
'We have a culture of not worrying how long you get on the phone and talk for. That has encouraged use, it has encouraged a lack of fear of the technology. To introduce charges when most other countries around the world are thinking of having no time-charge seems out of step.' In Ofta's consultative document, the director-general of telecommunications, Alex Arena, said changing technology meant there were dangers in allowing local calls to be free indefinitely.
The free-call system was open to abuse by people whose computers were plugged into the system 24 hours a day and other heavy users, Mr Arena said.
'If we continue to allow uncontrolled use by machines free-of-charge of the public telephone network, there is a danger that telephone charges could be pushed up significantly or service quality would deteriorate quickly.' Four options were discussed in the report: doing nothing, charging for time spent on a line, expanding the flat-rate charge to cover all services and offering customers a choice between a flat-rate or measured tariff.
Mr Arena said: 'It can be concluded that the existing flat-rate tariff structure is unfavourable to a great majority of residential telephone users and that a small number of heavy users are being subsidised by other users.