Lai See | HKT takes telecoms regulator to court over Apple's sim-locking

Apple recently took a pasting in People's Daily and other official mainland media for its trading practices. Now it is being criticised in Hong Kong for "anti-competitive practices" and for a "flagrant disregard" of the regulator for its own commercial gains. These criticisms are contained in court documents in which PCCW's HKT, which operates PCCW Mobile, is seeking leave to apply for a judicial review over Apple's practice in Hong Kong of sim-locking. This involves restricting the use of a mobile phone via the sim card. Apple's iPhone 5, which hit the market in September last year, has the ability to run on the new, faster 4G/LTE networks. It will also run on the 3G networks of all five mobile operators in Hong Kong. But initially it would only run on SmarTone's 4G/LTE network. Subsequently, the phone has been able to run on the faster networks provided by Hutchison and CSL, but not those of PCCW Mobile and China Mobile.

HKT's application for a judicial review is not directly aimed at Apple but at the Communications Authority, which it says has been dragging its feet over the issue and is not doing its job properly. In its court documents, HKT draws attention to the "sim-lock statement" issued by the regulator in 1997 which says that sim-locking for "the purposes of tying customers to networks", other than for the purpose of discouraging fraud or theft, "is strictly forbidden". HKT argues that Apple is in breach of this requirement while also noting that only those operators that have agreements with Apple to buy its devices have access to the faster networks. Apple denies that it has done anything illegal. Nevertheless, its actions, HKT asserts, along with the failure of the regulator to act within a reasonable period of time to its complaints, has damaged PCCW Mobile in causing a significant number of consumers to believe that PCCW Mobile does not support the iPhone 5 on its faster 4G network. This, it says, had cost it hundreds of millions of dollars by the end of December 2012.

We hear of more complaints about tycoon mobiles making a nuisance of themselves at the drop-off area at Hong Kong station. A reader complains of having to be dropped off on the road outside the station rather than the pavement. This is because there were four large black tycoon mobiles occupying much of the available space while, no doubt, waiting for their respective masters to appear. Everyone else was inconvenienced by the congestion they were causing. As usual, the "traffic control" wardens did nothing to move them on. Instead, they were busy noting the registration numbers of taxis that allowed people to hop in after their passengers had alighted, even though it was only a matter of seconds before they sped off with their new fare.