# Hong Kong Telecom

HKT Limited (Chinese: 香港電訊有限公司; Cantonese Yale: Hēunggóng dihnseun yáuhhaahngūngsī), also known as Hong Kong Telecom (Chinese: 香港電訊; Cantonese Yale: Hēunggóng dihnseun), is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Hong Kong. It has a dominant position in fixed-line, mobile, IDD and broadband services in Hong Kong. HKT Group is a subsidiary of PCCW since 2000, after it was acquired from Cable & Wireless plc.
The company, along with HKT Trust (Chinese: 香港電訊信託), is a pair of listed corporations on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which the two corporations were bundled as one single stapled security.

## Corporate identities

The former holding company of the group was Cable & Wireless HKT Limited (Chinese: 香港電訊有限公司; former ticker symbol: 8). It was a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless plc. It was taken over and privatised by PCCW in 2000. PCCW also started to use the ticker symbol "8" after the takeover. Cable & Wireless HKT Limited was formerly known as Hong Kong Telecommunications Limited (Chinese: 香港電訊有限公司), which was incorporated in 1987; it was renamed to Cable & Wireless HKT Limited in 1999, but renamed again to PCCW-HKT Limited in 2000; PCCW-HKT still use the same registered Chinese name (香港電訊有限公司) until 2011, which in the same year the Chinese name became the registered Chinese name of HKT Limited instead.
PCCW-HKT had a major subsidiary PCCW-HKT Telephone Limited (Chinese: 香港電話有限公司), which was incorporated in 1925 under the name Hongkong Telephone Company, Limited; it was briefly known as Cable & Wireless HKT Telephone Limited (Chinese: 香港電話有限公司) from 1999 to 2000. As of 31 December 2017, PCCW-HKT$^{:80}$ as well as PCCW-HKT Telephone were still live, wholly owned subsidiaries of PCCW.$^{:78}$ However, the telephone services are now provided by HKT's wholly owned subsidiary, Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT) Limited instead, after a group restructuring in 2008.
In October 2011, PCCW shareholders approved a partial spin-off of the assets as HKT on the Hong Kong stock exchange (but excluding the two legal persons PCCW-HKT and PCCW-HKT Telephone). HKT was successfully listed on 29 November 2011, as HKT Limited and HKT Trust. HKT Limited was incorporated in the Cayman Islands, while its direct parent entity, HKT Trust, was set up in Hong Kong under the laws of Hong Kong.

## History

Domestic telecommunications facilities in Hong Kong became more advanced in 1925 when the Hong Kong Telephone Company Limited (HKTC) took over the interests of John Pender's China and Japan Telephone and Electric Company. The company's mandate included providing all the British colonies with local telephone services. Over the next six decades, Hong Kong Telephone's line capacity grew to more than 2.5 million, with the company serving approximately six million people.
Telecommunications became increasingly important following World War I, and in 1929 the British companies Marconi Wireless and Eastern Telegraph joined to establish Cable & Wireless. The company's strategy was to supply telephone and telegraph services in Britain's colonies, and it succeeded in securing an exclusive franchise to provide international communications services in Hong Kong.
By 1972, the company's biggest operation was its subsidiary in rapidly growing Hong Kong. Hong Kong Telephone, meanwhile, built a new headquarters in 1972. The company's growth was said to typify the colony's transition from an economy based on manufacturing to one dependent on service industries, which created a demand for telecommunications services. In 1975 Hong Kong Telephone's franchise for domestic service in the colony was extended for an additional 20 years, to expire just ahead of Hong Kong's reversion to China's control in 1997.

### Chronology
#### Hong Kong Telephone Company

* 1906: China and Japan Telephone and Electric Company acquired a 25-year franchised licence on fixed-line.
* 1925: China and Japan Telephone and Electric Company was acquired by Hong Kong Telephone Company Limited (HKTC). The government also granted HKTC a 50 years franchised licence on telephone service.
* 1968: HKTC's franchise was extended for another 20 years.
* 1983: HKTC started to build their own mobile radiotelephone service, which was supplied and installed by NEC; in the next year the service went public under HKTC's subsidiary Communication Services Limited

#### Cable and Wireless (Hong Kong)

* 1871: The predecessor of Cable & Wireless established its Hong Kong branch, for its submarine communications cables that connect from Hong Kong to Saigon, Fuzhou, Manila, Labuan and Macau (or 1936 according to another source)
* 1962: Cable & Wireless acquired a 25-year franchise for telephone and telegraph services
* 1981: The Hong Kong branch of Cable & Wireless plc was incorporated as Cable and Wireless (Hong Kong) Limited (later known as Hong Kong Telecom International; HKTI). Hong Kong government was a minority shareholder for 20%.
* 1983: Cable and Wireless (Hong Kong) acquired 34.8% shares of HKTC from Jardine Matheson.
* 1986: Cable & Wireless also announced plans for an underwater optical fibre cable connecting Hong Kong with Japan and South Korea (a part of APCN), to become operational in 1990.

#### Hong Kong Telecommunications

* 1987: Cable & Wireless (Hong Kong) and Hong Kong Telephone Company merged to form a new telecommunications group, with the new holding company called Hong Kong Telecommunications Limited, replacing Hong Kong Telephone Company as a listed company on the stock exchange of Hong Kong and as one of the constituents of Hang Seng Index (the blue-chip index of HK). Government of Hong Kong owned around 5.5% shares of the new company immediately after the merger; Cable & Wireless plc remained as the largest shareholder.
* 1990: Chinese government controlled CITIC Hong Kong acquired 20% shares of Hong Kong Telecommunications from former British state owned enterprise Cable & Wireless plc.
* 1995: HKTC's franchise expired. HKTC was one of the 4 companies to receive the new licence in local fixed-line services
* 1999: Hong Kong Telecommunications Limited was renamed to Cable & Wireless HKT; the subsidiaries, HKTC was renamed to Cable & Wireless HKT Telephone Limited; HKTI was renamed to Cable & Wireless HKT International.
* 2000: Cable & Wireless HKT was acquired by PCCW. Cable & Wireless HKT was renamed to PCCW-HKT Limited; the subsidiary HKTC was renamed to PCCW-HKT Telephone Limited; while HKTI was renamed to PCCW-HKT International
* 2001: the subsidiary HKTI was renamed to Reach Networks Hong Kong, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Reach Limited instead, a joint venture of PCCW and Telstra; 60% stake of CSL was also sold to Telstra
* 2002: the remaining stake of CSL, the only mobile network operator of the group, was sold to Telstra
* 2005: PCCW-HKT takeover Sunday Communications, relaunching its mobile network operator as PCCW Mobile
* 2007: PCCW-HKT Telephone acquired the licence of CDMA2000 mobile network operator, and launched the services in the next year.
* 2008 to 2011: Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT) Limited was incorporated; Moody's ceased to assign credit rating to PCCW-HKT Telephone Limited and assign a new rating to Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT) Limited instead; it was reported that PCCW-HKT Telephone would become dormant. In the same year, some of the subsidiaries of PCCW, were transferred to an intermediate holding company HKT Group Holdings Limited (HKTGH$^{:42}$), for example PCCW Global, PCCW Mobile, PCCW Media, PCCW Solutions, and engineering division Cascade Limited.$^{:166}$ However, PCCW re-organised HKTGH again in the eve of the 2011 IPO of HKT Limited, which some non-telecommunications businesses were spin-off from HKTGH.$^{:167}$ PCCW Media and PCCW Solutions for example, were directly owned by PCCW again. Also, HKTGH became a subsidiary of HKT Limited.$^{:169}$

#### HKT Limited

* 2011: PCCW made HKT Limited, c/o HKT Trust, a spin-off business that separate listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
* 2012: HKT's PCCW Global acquired Gateway Communications, a satellite services provider
* 2014: HKT re-acquired CSL (known as its holding company CSL New World Mobility) from Telstra and New World Development; CSL and PCCW Mobile merged, with CSL as the surviving brand; the brand New World Mobility of the former CSL New World Mobility Group was renamed to Sun Mobile
* 2017: HKT and subsidiary PCCW Global jointly-acquired Console Connect, a provider of global interconnection solution.

## HKT (Hong Kong Telecom)

HKT Group Holdings Limited was formed in 2008 to hold the telecommunications services, media and IT businesses of the PCCW Group, a reorganization designed to improve the Group's operational efficiencies.$^{:166}$ HKT and its predecessor PCCW-HKT, was the first quadruple play provider in Hong Kong, offering media content and services for fixed-line, broadband Internet, TV and mobile. PCCW acquired HKT, at that time known as Cable & Wireless HKT, in February 2000 from Cable & Wireless.

### Main business and subsidiaries
#### Commercial and international business

The HKT Commercial Group provides ICT services to small, medium and large enterprises. The group managed the installation of Asia's largest IP-enabled network for securities and derivatives markets, built for Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited and known as SDNet. It includes an electronic passport system, known as e-PASS, and the Smart Identity Card system for the Hong Kong SAR Government.

#### Netvigator

Netvigator is a residential and commercial Internet service provider in Hong Kong, a brand of HKT Limited. It is Hong Kong's largest Internet service provider (ISP).

#### csl, 1O1O, Club SIM

CSL Mobile is an HKT subsidiary, which operates mobile network brands of "csl", "1O1O" and "Club SIM" in Hong Kong. CSL, at that time incorporated as CSL New World Mobility, was re-acquired by PCCW via HKT in 2013. After the 2013 acquisition, HKT also merged PCCW Mobile HK into CSL. CSL was sold by PCCW in 2001, while PCCW Mobile HK, formerly SUNDAY, was acquired by PCCW in 2005–06.

#### SUN Mobile

SUN Mobile, formerly New World Mobility, is a joint venture of HKT Limited and Telecom Digital [zh]. It was a former joint venture of CSL New World Mobility and Telecom Digital. In 2013 CSL New World Mobility was acquired by PCCW via HKT Limited, from Telstra and New World Development, thus the mobile virtual network operator was re-branded as SUN Mobile.

#### HKT Teleservices

* HKT Teleservices, a subsidiary of HKT– formerly PCCW Teleservices, a contact centers and business process outsourcing provider, operates a contact centre outsourcing business along with an operation in the U.S. It handles inbound and outbound calls, emails and other transactions for customers.

#### PCCW Global

PCCW Global (formerly Beyond The Network America) is the international operating division of HKT Limited. It was owned by PCCW's sub-holding company HKT Group Holdings Limited (HKTGH) since 2008$^{:166}$ and HKT Limited since its IPO in 2011.$^{:167}$
PCCW Global acquired Gateway Communications in 2012 and Console Connect in 2017.
** Console Connect
** Crypteia Networks

##### YouTube incident

On 24 February 2008, Pakistan Telecom caused a major interruption of access to the video-sharing website YouTube. Pakistani Government authorities instructed Pakistan Telecom (PTCL) to prevent access to YouTube within Pakistan. PTCL complied by changing the BGP entry for YouTube – essentially updating its local internet address book for where YouTube's section of the internet is. The idea was to direct its internet users to a page that said YouTube was blocked. Unfortunately, the ISP announced the new route to its Internet link provider, PCCW. PCCW had recently provided temporary access to PTCL in order to restore the nation's loss of internet access due to a previous major submarine cable break event. PTCL began leaking the BGP announcement to PCCW prior to PCCW's completion of the BGP validation and filtering policies process on the newly activated link. This allowed the announcement to propagate to other networks.
Once detected, PCCW immediately blocked the leaked announcement from PTCL and access to YouTube was restored within 2 hours.

### HKT Interactive Media (PCCW Media)
#### now TV

now TV is an IPTV and pay-TV provider in Hong Kong delivered by PCCW Media. now TV serves Hong Kong with more than 190 channels of local, Asian and international programming, such as the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1, J-League, French Open, ATP World Tour, and World Snooker Tour. In addition, now TV is a producer of news, sports and infotainment programming and a provider of interactive services. nowTV can be viewed on its nowTV app, and select now TV content and interactive applications can also be accessed via the group's 4G mobile network and broadband service.

### The Club

a Hong Kong customer loyalty program.

### HKT Payment Limited

the developer of "Tap & Go", a prepaid mobile payment service for Hong Kong users.
Brands and services
* HKT-eye over-the-top media services and Internet Protocol TV service delivered to firmware-modified tablet computer
* PPS (Payment by Phone Service) – a bill payment service provided by HKT and EPS.

## Former service

* iTV, an interactive television
* Cascade
PCCW announced the formation of wholly owned subsidiary Cascade Limited (traditional Chinese: 萃鋒有限公司; simplified Chinese: 萃锋有限公司) in late 2002 to 2008, It was reported that the staff were offered a wage-cut in the new contract. The name of Cascade is removed from now on, become a part of HKT and named as "Engineering", a business unit of HKT, simply like Commercial group of PCCW. All staff in Cascade had transferred to HKT without changing.
),$^{:166}$ However, due to 2011 initial public offering of HKT Limited, some of the subsidiaries of HKTGH (which HKTGH was a wholly owned subsidiary of HKT Limited$^{:101}$) still have use the name cascade or pccw in their name due to law and finance reasons, although they wholly owned subsidiaries of HKT.$^{:167}$ A namesake, Mainland China-incorporated "PCCW Cascade Technology (Guangzhou) Limited" (Chinese: 广州电讯盈科萃锋科技有限公司) is a wholly owned subsidiary of HKT Limited.

## Controversy

In 2018, it was exposed that HKT breached the land leases for 4 of their telephone exchange buildings. They were illegally converted to customers service centers.