SmarTone refocuses on 4G expansion
Customers can finally look forward to even faster services after mobile provider finally joins the long-term evolution
In August last year, SmarTone Telecommunications' chief executive Douglas Li adamantly expressed the view that Hong Kong mobile users were not ready to embrace high-speed 4G services.
CSL was the sole mobile network operator in Hong Kong at that time to operate a 4G network, based on the technology called Long-Term Evolution (LTE). The firm introduced its 4G service in November 2010, the first carrier in Asia to do so.
Unfazed by CSL's lead, Li said SmarTone management was "more focused on improving customer experience than letting our subscribers be guinea pigs for a technology that is not yet ready".
Li declared that the plan was for SmarTone to further develop its 3G infrastructure and bide its time in launching a 4G LTE network.
His main arguments were the lack of 4G smartphones from the major handset makers and that the existing 3G networks, based on the Evolved High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) wireless broadband standard, delivered enough speed and capacity to satisfy local consumers' needs.
On 4G networks, users can get theoretical internet download speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. The fastest existing 3G HSPA+ networks run at 42Mbps.