Hong Kong Telecom


HKT Limited, also known as Hong Kong Telecom, is one of the largest telecommunications company of 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, is a pair of listed corporations in 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, 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, 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 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, which was incorporated in 1925 under the name Hongkong Telephone Company, Limited; it was briefly known as Cable & Wireless HKT Telephone Limited from 1999 to 2000., PCCW-HKT as well as PCCW-HKT Telephone were still live, wholly owned subsidiaries of PCCW. However, the telephone services is now provided by HKT's wholly owned subsidiary Hong Kong Telecommunications Limited instead, after a group restructure in 2008.
In October 2011, PCCW shareholders approve a partial spin-off of the assets as HKT on the Hong Kong stock exchange. HKT is 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 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

Former service
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.