Hong Kong entrepreneurs said it would be expensive for them to go back to long-distance telephone calls to the mainland, as Beijing looked to tighten its control of internet telephony.
Wilson Shea Kai-chuen, president of the Hong Kong Small and Medium Enterprises Association, said his company used to pay more than HK$20,000 a month for calls to the mainland.
Since adopting voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technologies for calls and videoconferences though the internet, the company now spends just a few hundred dollars a month.
'The trend cannot be reversed ... I believe what the mainland government wants is to have everything under control. But that is a setback for the industry,' he said.
Most small companies are using the internet for phone calls, and their costs would increase if only a few telecommunications companies were authorised to provide those services, he said.
Videoconferencing on the internet is useful for manufacturers: suppliers can show them live images of products during a negotiation, he said.
Internet calls have also replaced paperwork to some extent - companies can now document their business dealings by digitally recording their internet phone calls.