Demo Press Release: Richard Li

ITU TELECOM ASIA 2000 Closes
Region's Mobile and Internet Boom Set to Continue

Hong Kong, China, 8 December 2000 -- Tomorrow marks the final day of ITU TELECOM ASIA 2000, the fifth regional telecommunications Exhibition and Forum for the Asia-Pacific region, which is being held from 4 to 9 December at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC), Hong Kong SAR, China. It is being organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and hosted by the Government of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

ASIA 2000 has been the ITU's largest and most successful regional event ever, and has been featuring world and regional leaders from the telecoms and IT industries as well as key figures from governments across the region. They have been meeting in Hong Kong to discuss the issues shaping the future path of an industry which generates well over one trillion US dollars a year in revenues worldwide.

Anthony Wong, the Director-General of the local regulator, OFTA, described the event as having been a huge success both for Hong Kong SAR and for China. "We're very pleased with the number and the quality of participants," he said, "and it has been great to see the HKCEC filled to capacity. The ASIA 2000 event has brought a huge influx of visitors, exhibitors and delegates into the city, both from the PRC and from around the region, and it's been a truly exceptional week for all of us."

A total of more than 50,000 trade participants came to see the latest technology and services on display from 500 exhibitors from the telecommunications and information technology industry.

ASIA 2000 put the spotlight on the dual boom underway in the Asia-Pacific region in mobile communications and Internet-based services. A third equally important feature of ASIA 2000 has been demonstrations of the solutions for broadband access which underlie both mobile internet and multimedia communications.

The uptake of mobile telephony in the region has been astonishing. A decade ago there were barely a million mobile cellular subscribers in the whole Asia-Pacific region. By the beginning of the year 2000 there were more than 170 million, and China and Japan are now the second and third largest cellular markets in the world by subscribers, after the United States. In a number of countries and regions across Asia - including in Japan and in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, cellular subscribers now clearly outnumber their fixed-line counterparts.

There has also been huge enthusiasm in Asia-Pacific for the Internet, and subscriber growth is faster in some countries in the region than anywhere else in the world. By June 2000 Japan, China and Korea (Rep.) were the world's second, third and fourth Internet markets, by users.

Pyrotechnic Performances

A spectacular Opening Ceremony was held on Sunday 3 December, featuring performers in London, New York and Hong Kong singing in unison. They were followed by dancers, Chinese dragons and dramatic pyrotechnic displays. The ceremony was officiated by Bangguo Wu, Vice Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, the host country of ITU TELECOM ASIA 2000, Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the ITU, and Chee Hwa Tung, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. A keynote speech was also given by Richard Li, the Executive Chairman of Pacific Century CyberWorks, the sponsor of the Opening Ceremony.

Speaking first, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong SAR, Mr Tung, said what an honour it was to be able to hold the event in Hong Kong, especially since it was the first major ITU event to be hosted by China. He went on to highlight the advanced state of development of Hong Kong's telecommunications network, pointing out that 100% of commercial buildings and 90% of homes in Hong Kong now have broadband access, and that mobile penetration, at 71%, was now higher than anywhere in the world except Scandinavia.¹

Mr Utsumi then reminded the audience during his opening address that affordable access to communications services is essential to social and economic existence in the 21^st century and is vital to our cultural and even our individual existence. He closed with a challenging goal for the telecoms sector - to bring virtually the whole of mankind within easy reach of modern means of telecommunications, including the Internet, by the end of the decade. "Affordable Universal Access - not just to basic telephony, but to the Internet - is a realizable dream. Let us continue, together, towards realizing that dream of digital opportunity here in Hong Kong, this week," he said.²

In his keynote speech Vice Premier Wu spoke of the dramatic telecommunications development that had taken place in China over the past few years, announcing that teledensity - the number of telephone lines per hundred people - had now reached 17.8% countrywide and was above 35% in urban areas. Cellular penetration, he said, had grown to reach 5.5% of the population, with over 70 million subscribers. "By September this year," he continued, "China was the second largest market in the world, and within five years it will be the world's largest market."

Wooing Investors

The Forum at ASIA 2000 covered the whole breadth of the telecommunications field, with more than 250 speakers and over 1,200 people participating in total. The Forum encompassed a Policy and Development Summit, an Infrastructure Summit, a TELECOM Development Symposium and various Roundtable sessions, all of which maintained a strong focus on the impact of the digital revolution and the trend towards increased partnership with the private sector and the investment community.

The Forum Programme opened with a combined session featuring a welcome address from Carrie Yau, Secretary of Hong Kong SAR's Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau (ITBB), and opening addresses from ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi and Jichuan Wu, China's Minister of Information Industry.

In his opening address Mr Utsumi highlighted the trends dominating the region. "In all three major networks - fixed-line, mobile and Internet - there are exciting developments which promise even faster rates of growth," he said. "In the fixed-line network, it is market liberalization among the emerging giants of the region which is promoting growth; in the mobile network it is the launch of 3G services which promises growth, while for the Internet it is the development of more local language content which will spur growth. The simple demographics of the Asia-Pacific region dictate that no company involved in the telecommunications business can afford not to be interested in the region. By the end of the current decade, the region will represent almost half of the world market, with a potential market of one billion new telecommunication consumers."³

Mr Wu, for his part, drew attention to China's extraordinary progress - and potential - in telecommunications development. "In two decades of reform China has realized a leap forward," he said. "In fact telecommunications growth has consistently been 20% to 30% higher than that of the rest of the economy. From 1979 to 1992 we went from just two million telephone lines to 10 million telephone lines. By the middle of 1998 that had grown to 100 million telephone lines. And by September this year China had more than 200 million telephone lines."

The TELECOM Development Symposium which was organized in conjunction with the Forum brought 76 telecommunications specialists from 40 countries to ASIA 2000 as part of a fellowship programme to discuss the principal factors governments, regulatory bodies and operators need to consider in a customer and business oriented operating environment, to improve services within their own countries and, in the case of operators, to survive in a liberalized market.

Asia-Pacific Telecommunication Indicators 2000 / IP Telephony

ASIA 2000 was also the venue for the launch of two new key ITU publications, Asia-Pacific Telecommunication Indicators 2000, which offers a thorough and authoritative analysis and assessment of the data the ITU has collected from all of its Member States in the region, and IP Telephony (the third edition of the ITU Internet Reports) which deals with the subject of the next ITU World Telecommunication Policy Forum which is taking place in March 2001 in Geneva. Both publications are available from the ITU sales office - please contact sales@itu.int for further information.

ITU TELECOM events have an unprecedented track record in bringing together governments, industry, investors, operators, and other key players in telecommunications. They are also of direct benefit to the developing world, with the surplus funds generated being used for telecommunications projects in the world's developing countries.

The previous ASIA TELECOM event, held in Singapore in 1997, attracted 40,608 trade visitors from 108 countries, 476 exhibitors and 419 journalists. Exhibition space comprised 18,781 m2, including upper floors. A total of 1,155 participants attended the Forum sessions.

ASIA 2000 Statistics are as follows:

For further information on TELECOM, please see the ITU TELECOM web site: www.itu.int/itutelecom
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