3HK (Three Hong Kong)

Company Overview

3 Hong Kong (3HK, 3香港) is a mobile network operator and internet service provider in Hong Kong SAR. The company was founded in 1984 as Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong, and today remains a subsidiary of CK Hutchison which operates the global 3 brand.

Historically a provider of 1G AMPS service, the company began offering 2G GSM over 900 and 1800 MHz in May 2004 after acquiring operations of Orange HK. 3G UMTS began December 2006, which was upgraded to HSPA+ in July 2009 and again to DC-HSPA+ in May 2012. A UMTS900 B8 (900 MHz) service was introduced June 2011.

4G LTE was launched May 2012 over B7 (2600 MHz), and extended later in October with the introduction of B3 (1800 MHz). LTE-A was introduced with 2C carrier aggregation of B3 and B7 to provide up to 200 Mbps data rates. The company's B7 network is shared under the Genius Brand arrangement with CSL.

The company launched an additional B40 (2300 MHz) TDD service in October 2016. 900 MHz spectrum was refarmed to B8 (900 MHz) LTE in June 2016. Following refarming of 2100 MHz spectrum, 3HK launched LTE-A Pro 5C carrier aggregation, along with 4X4 MIMO and 256QAM technologies claiming peak data rates of 1.1 Gbps in March 2018.

IoT Strategy

In collaboration with Huawei, 3HK launched its NB-IoT network in September 2017 over the B8 (900 MHz) band.

3HK 5G

A temporary permit was issued in May 2018 to conduct 5G network trials in the 26 GHz and 28 GHz bands. 3 Hong Kong conducted in-and-outdoor trials in the third quarter of 2018 involving new radio equipment in the 28 GHz band (Millimetre Wave spectrum). Outdoor trials using 400 MHz spectrum resources achieved a downlink speed peaking at 3.2 Gbps, an early demonstration of the high speeds promised by 5G technology.

Another temporary permit to carry out in-and-outdoor 5G network trials in the n78 (3500 MHz) band was granted in June 2018. 3 Hong Kong established a trial cell site based on Massive MIMO technology in Causeway Bay in the second half of 2018 and ran speed and coverage trials involving advanced 5G network equipment with 100 MHz spectrum resources in the 3.5 GHz band. Network speed reached on that occasion was over 2 Gbps.