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SCMP Reporter

HONG KONG telecommunications companies are planning new services where telephone numbers are assigned to individuals rather than the particular communications device the person is using at the time.

  In effect, the personal numbering system is an elaborate call forwarding system. The difference is, however, that once competition is introduced for services in the territory next year, consumers can theoretically keep the same number for life, irrespective of whether they change telephone companies or change address.

  The Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) is expected to announce interconnection details - the way in which competing telephone companies would forward personal-number calls between networks and at what cost - for the new system next month.

   Personal numbers are an extension of OFTA's portable numbering plan, details of which were made public last month.

  With the portable system, businesses and consumers will be able to keep the same telephone number, even if they relocate offices, or move house, regardless of which service provider they use.

  The personal numbers will simply be directed to whatever terminating device the consumer instructs the network to use, at any time of day.

   Calls to the personal number might go to the subscriber's home in the morning, be directed to his office before lunch, to an answering service later in the day and re-directed to a family member's house later in the evening.

  Hong Kong's director-general of communications Alex Arena said yesterday the industry's response to the prospect of personal numbering had been enthusiastic and the various telecommunications companies were negotiating on interconnect arrangements, based on broad requirements laid down by OFTA.

  Once operators had come up with interconnection arrangements he said he would have to make sure such arrangements were fair and there were no technical constraints put in the way, denying some operators fair access.



Major HK firms plan personal numbers