Updated at 7.06pm: Hong Kong's first third generation (3G) mobile licences were awarded to the required minimum four participants on Wednesday after reaching the reserve price.
The companies awarded the 3G mobile spectrum licences were Hutchison Telecom (Hutchison Whampoa 75 per cent, NTT DoCoMo 25 per cent), CSL (Telstra 60 per cent, Pacific Century CyberWorks 40 per cent), SmarTone Telecommunications (Sun Hung Kai Properties 28 per cent), British Telecom and Sunday Communications.
New World Mobility, a New World Development subsidiary widely tipped to win a licence, quit the auction citing ''serious consideration of the local mobile market environment''.
To secure a 3G licence, the winners will pay $50 million each over the first five years, starting at the end of 2002, and five per cent of their network revenues in the subsequent 10 years until year 2015.
Applying a 12.5 per cent discount rate, the SAR government will reap at least $470 million from each of the winners, giving a total auction price of $1.88 billion.
Eva Cheng, deputy secretary of the Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau, said that auction price measured per person in Hong Kong was $70, or 30 per cent lower than the price in Singapore where the price per person was $100.
