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Andrew Chetham

Peoples Telephone continues to set the pace in the race to sign up PCS mobile customers, capturing about a third of the market.

 Chief executive Jim Pratt said the company now had about 133,000 to 135,000 customers.

 The most recent government figures put the total PCS market at 379,000 at the end of May.

 Mr Pratt said he was pleased with the progress Peoples had made over the past few months, consistently taking a large share of new PCS customers.

 'In March, we took 44.2 per cent of the new subscribers, in April 44.2 and in May 48.7 per cent,' he said.

 Peoples has been the only one of the six PCS operators to give out regular subscriber figures.

 In early May, New World Telephone claimed it had 120,000 customers.

 Sunday has not released a figure since March, when it claimed 85,000 subscribers.

 The networks of Hutchison and Hongkong Telecom are likely to be well behind, as they have put little effort into marketing them. They plan to wait until they can integrate the PCS networks into their existing GSM technology and market them as one service.

 In the meantime, rumours have resurfaced about the future of the Sunday network.

 After the sale of the P Plus network to SmarTone, the only standalone networks are Peoples, Sunday and New World, although New World is the sister operation of the fixed-line and international call operation.

 There are suggestions that buyers for the Sunday operation are being sought, with 20 per cent holder Distacom chairman Richard Siemens hunting for potential purchasers outside Hong Kong.



Peoples claims third of market