Annual fees for fixed carrier licences operating external telecommunications services will be cut on May 1 from $500,000 to $200,000.

The Commerce, Industry & Technology Bureau said the annual fees for public radio-communications services licences and mobile carrier licences will also be lowered from $24 per mobile station to $20.

The Telecommunications Authority will, on the same day, amend the licence fee payable for mobile stations under the public non-exclusive telecommunications service licences.

Declined administrative cost leads to fee cut

The bureau said the fee reduction reflects the lower administrative cost of regulating the external telecommunications services market, and the move will benefit over 20 operators which run external services by cable or satellite here.

The cost of administering each mobile station has also declined as a result of the increase in the number of mobile-phone subscribers, including activated prepaid SIM cards. The number of mobile subscribers reached 6.2 million in October.

All 2G and 3G mobile services operators, together with the trunked radio operators, radiolocation service operators, mobile data service operators, paging companies, and mobile virtual network operators, will benefit from the fee reduction.

Public support fee cut proposals

A public consultation was launched on January 9 and 11. The submissions received were generally supportive of the fee cut proposals.

Details of the reduction are set out in the Telecommunications (Amendment) Regulation 2004 and the Telecommunications (Carrier Licences) (Amendment) Regulation gazetted today.

They will be tabled at the Legislative Council for negative vetting on March 10.