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A History of Competition: The Impact of Antitrust on Hong Kong’s Telecommunications Markets
Sandra Marco Colino*
Article

The full text of this Article may be found here.

29 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media &Ent. L.J. 931 (2019).

Article by Sandra Marco Colino

ABSTRACT

 

[H]

ong Kong has only had cross-sector competition law since 2015, but the city’s telecommunications markets have been subject to sector-specific antitrust provisions for over two decades. The importance of nurturing an efficient, innovative, and competitive telecoms industry for Hong Kong’s economic prosperity was acknowledged already at the time the sector was liberalized in the 1990s. Yet until the late 2000s, the government vehemently opposed the adoption of competition law in virtually all other sectors of the economy. This paper examines the effectiveness of the regulatory framework set up to guarantee the protection of competition in the telecommunications sector in Hong Kong. The results of the liberalization process are certainly remarkable, and the city boasts very competitive telecoms markets. However, it is argued that the enthusiasm over the results of the liberalization process may have eclipsed important competition issues in local markets, which could have been tackled through the development of a robust antitrust policy, but which were sadly left unheeded. On the basis of the analysis of the history of (sector-specific) competition law in the telecoms sector, this Article assesses the potential of the new Competition Ordinance to address the principal threats to competition in these markets. In doing so, the paper finds that, while the new regulatory framework may be generally suitable to combat collusion, it is less clear that it will effectively combat the problems associated with the creation of market power through mergers, or the abuse of that power.

*Ph.D. (European University Institute, Florence), LL.M. (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid). Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Member of the Academic Board, Dictum Abogados. Deputy Director, Centre for Financial Regulation and Economic Development (CFRED). NonGovernmental Advisor to the International Competition Network. Co-Managing Editor, China Antitrust Law Journal. The work described in this paper was substantially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CUHK 401612). This Article has been nominated for the 2019 Antitrust Writing Awards.