3HK offer discounts

February 12, 2004

After launching 3G services just over two weeks ago in Hong Kong, 3 is offering discounts to both corporate and retail customers.

Firms that buy five NEC c616 handsets will only pay HK$3,380 for each handset when each user sign up to the service for one year at a minimum HK$383 per month.

Inline with Valentine's day, 3 is offering consumers a HK$8,880 package for a pair of handsets and three months service for two.

3 has been aggressively cutting the price of its service in other markets, such as free handsets, to attract more consumers to sign up. Analysts believe the recent discounts will unlikely lead to further cuts in Hong Kong because, unlike 3's other markets, they have a 2G network and would not want to undercut their 2G subscriber base.

3 has not release subscriber figures for Hong Kong although it claims that new customers are coming in daily, and that 70% of these have been lured from the other five mobile operators. The firm is hoping that drop calls, which has a major problem for the network, would be eliminated by August.