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Georgina Lee

CSL will shift its call centre to Guangdong by the middle of this year  to cut  staff costs by 30 per cent.  
Eva Lam, a director of finance for Telstra Corp's wholly owned mobile unit, said  CSL would shift its customer relations management  operations to PCCW's call centre in Guangzhou. CSL  was a subsidiary of PCCW  from 2000  to 2002.
'Moving our call centre to Guangzhou is just one way to relieve cost pressures associated with the roll-out of our 3G services,' Ms Lam  said. 
Chief executive Hubert Ng Ching-wah said capital expenditure  on its third-generation network would peak in the  year from July.  Expenditure for the next financial year would be $800 million, an increase of $200 million.
CSL has been operating its customer  operations in conjunction with PCCW since it was a wholly owned mobile arm of Hongkong Telecom, which PCCW took over in 2000. 
Ms Lam said the  operations were outsourced to about 200  agents.  
Related operating costs accounted for less than 5 per cent of  operating expenditures.
In its just-released interim results for the six months to December, CSL said  operating expenditures  rose  14.7 per cent year on year to $1.56 billion, citing higher sales costs related to increased  handset sales. 
Ms Lam said while the cost savings would not immediately flow through to  earnings, net savings would be reflected in earnings over the long term. 
Future co-operation with PCCW was possible, she added.
 Although PCCW no longer has  a stake in CSL,  the two companies work closely  together. CSL sells its services at PCCW retail outlets. 
Meanwhile, Mr Ng said the outlook for 3G had improved and the company expected cash flow to break even 'after two or three years'. 
It has signed up about 2,000 customers since launching the service in December. At the end of last year, CSL had 1.3 million subscribers, mostly  signed up for its low-cost 2G brand, One2Free.
Data revenue from 3G applications - such as the sending  multimedia messages and downloading of video clips - has risen to 20 per cent of its average revenue per user (arpu), from less than  10 per cent before the launch of 3G. 
Its arpu stood at $340 a month at end of last year, the highest in the  market. 
'We are hoping to see increased data revenue from 3G offset our network costs within two or three years,' Mr Ng said. 
His  remarks about 3G were more optimistic  than those made as little as a year ago when  he complained that 3G network licensing costs, at $50 million each year for the first five years, would make it difficult for the company to recoup its investment.



CSL to shift call centre to Guangdong