Earful

city Telecom officer for customer care

After spreading its network to 1.2 million homes and its subscribers to voice, broadband and pay-television services crossing 600,000, fixed-line carrier City Telecom is now focusing on retaining its customers. For this, chairman Ricky Wong Wai-kay turned to long-time friend and schoolmate William Yeung, who will join the company as chief operating officer. Mr Yeung was director of the customer division at SmarTone Telecommunications, a mobile phone company. Mr Yeung has set up a new customer service centre in Hong Kong. The $2 million-per-month facility will showcase City Telecom services and provide a central place where customers can pick up their free gifts such as flat-screen TVs for signing long-term contracts. Mr Wong also felt the service centre would play a role in acquiring new customers who might be turned off by the company's aggressive door-to-door marketing.

S Korean broadcast comes to china mobiles

The Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group recently revealed it is testing digital multimedia broadcast (DMB) technology, the South Korean standard for delivering digital television transmissions to portable devices such as mobile phones, PDAs and laptops. While much of the world waits for digital video broadcasting handheld technology (DVB-H) to become available, DMB is already up and running in South Korea. The Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group has set up a joint venture with parent Shanghai Media Group to develop the technology for the mainland. According to the group's executive, China Mobile, the mainland's largest mobile operator, has expressed interest in using the DMB technology in Shanghai.