Hong Kong’s Telecommunications Authority has announced qualified bidders in the upcoming auction for 850 MHz, 900 MHz and 2 GHz frequency bands. The operators that have been approved by the regulator to participate in the bidding stage are China Mobile, CSL, Hong Kong Broadband Network, HKT, Hutchison and SmarTone-Vodafone.

This is a notice referred to in paragraph 3.3.1 of the notice of the terms and conditions of the Auction (the “Notice”) of 10 December 2010 issued by the Telecommunications Authority (the “Authority”) in exercise of the powers conferred by section 32I of the Telecommunications Ordinance, the Telecommunications (Determining Spectrum Utilization Fees by Auction) Regulation and all other powers enabling him to specify the terms and conditions of the Auction and the payment of the Spectrum Utilization Fees. Unless otherwise stated or the context otherwise requires, words and expressions used in this notice have the same meaning as that given to them in the Notice.

The Authority hereby announces that the following Bidders are:

Qualified Bidders (in alphabetical order):

(a) China Mobile Hong Kong Company Limited;

(b) CSL Limited;

(c) Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited;

(d) Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT) Limited;

(e) Hutchison Telephone Company Limited; and

(f) SmarTone Mobile Communications Limited.The Qualified Bidders are eligible for participating in the Bidding Stage.  Each individual Bidder will be informed of the details of the Bidding Stage separately by a Bidding Stage Notice referred to in paragraph 4.3.1 of the Notice.

For the avoidance of doubt, this qualification shall not be taken as an approval of any proposal made by the Qualified Bidders in their Applications.