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SCMP Reporter

THE launch of Hongkong's third CT2 service comes at a time of renewed optimism in the local telepoint market.

  A solution is now in sight to the lack of choice of cheaply priced CT2 handsets which some operators have blamed for slow customer growth.

  After long delays, big manufacturers, including Sony, Samsung and Kenwood, have announced plans to offer their own CT2 handsets later this year or in 1994.

  Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has also just announced that it has developed a CT2 baseband chip with Sony which should allow manufacturers to produce a whole range of telepoint handsets quickly and with a minimum amount of engineering effort.

  AMD claims the new chip replaces up to five components used in existing CT2 terminals and, since it requires less power, offers longer battery life and the prospect of smaller, lighter handsets.

  Coinciding with the launch of Pacific TeleLink's new service is a re-invigorated marketing effort from existing operators, Chevalier Telepoint and Hutchison Paging.

  As part of its first birthday celebrations on April 28, Chevalier is launching its own voice messaging paging service with ''meet-me'' facilities, a partial solution to the inability of CT2 phones to receive incoming calls.

  In June, the company plans to start offering a clip-on pager which fits into the Shaye telepoint handset.

  For its part, Hutchison has introduced an integrated pager with its Motorola handset to coincide with its service launch on March 28 last year.

  There is no immediate sign that the special offer on CT2 handsets by Hutchison's Hongkong subsidiary is likely to be extended to Hongkong.

  In Britain, the company has been selling off older CT2 models for about $700, compared with the $2,388 charged in the territory.

  Most operators acknowledge that the price and availability of handsets remain the primary driver in the development of the telepoint market.

   But there are also a host of related marketing issues.

  Questions remain over whether the CT2 product has been positioned too closely to cellular in Hongkong and whether telepoint should be sold separately or as part of a complete communications package.

  Such considerations apparently led Pacific TeleLink to postpone its launch last November to enable it, among other things, to acquire its own paging interests.

  The overblown public expectations about the service have dogged operators since the early days of CT2 in Britain. It is not surprising, therefore, that some operators now react with scepticism to proposed revisions of the CT2 standard by ETSI, due to be ratified this summer.

  Among other things, the revisions incorporate a procedure for CT2 handsets to receive incoming calls.

  One operator has suggested that to achieve this objective, the network coverage offered by CT2 providers would have to be far more comprehensive than that currently required.

   It could also make the service prohibitively expensive to provide.

  In the meantime, operators have faced the inevitable media criticism highlighting the negative aspects of CT2; that CT2 phones do not accept incoming calls, have restricted mobility and may soon be eclipsed by more sophisticated systems.

   It will not be the first time people have misread the telepoint market.

  Following CT2's highly publicised temporary demise in Britain last year, pundits were predicting that, if telepoint flopped in Hongkong, CT2 technology would never succeed anywhere else. But it has.



CT2 launch comes amid new optimism