Long-form / 深度專題
郵政與通訊：由第一所郵局到光纖與固網開放
Postal service and communications: from the first post office to fibre and an open fixed network
香港嘅郵政同電訊，係幾時由「送信」變成「送訊號」？
郵政同通訊表面上係兩件事，但面對同一個制度問題：訊息要送到，就要有人保證佢送得到。第一所郵政機構在 1841 年設立，第一套郵票在 1862 年發行；到 1871 年，海底電纜把香港接上上海，電報比輪船快。此後電話、無線電、光纖同互聯網一路把「傳遞」變成「連線」，而每一次技術轉移，都伴隨一條新法例或者一個新監管機構。
約 4 分鐘 · 5 節 · 19 條時間線 · 3 份文獻
English
1. Post came first: one institution, one set of stamps, one union
Hong Kong’s communications history begins with the post, and it begins early: in November 1841 the first postal institution was established at the present Garden Road junction. That is worth noting — it predates many later public services, which shows that communications were a basic condition for both administration and trade.
On 8 December 1862 Hongkong Post issued its first set of stamps in seven denominations from two cents to ninety-six cents. A stamp is more than a receipt: a set of denominations is a schedule of charges that can be calculated in advance, so a sender no longer has to bargain with the post office each time.
On 1 April 1877 Hong Kong became a member of the Universal Postal Union, which brought a significant fall in local postal charges. The shift was institutional: membership let Hong Kong mail move under international rules rather than through one bilateral agreement after another. In the early twentieth century the General Post Office moved from one building to another — the third generation building opened in Central on Pedder Street on 19 June 1911 — and in 1937 the Stanley Post Office opened, still operating today as the oldest surviving post office in Hong Kong.
2. The telegraph: connecting Hong Kong to the world outside
The telegraph was the first technology that carried a message without a person or a ship. In 1869 the Great Northern Telegraph Company opened a branch in Hong Kong, the earliest telegraph office in the territory. Two years later, on 1 April 1871, it opened a submarine cable between Hong Kong and Shanghai — Hong Kong’s first external telegraph line and East Asia’s first submarine telegraph line.
What the cable changed was the meaning of time: a letter to Shanghai had waited for a sailing, while a telegram could arrive the same day. The telegraph also entered daily operations — the Observatory took foreign weather reports through cable companies, and ships and the railway set their clocks by time signals. Communications infrastructure has never served only one user.
Regulation followed radio. On 17 July 1903 the Government enacted a wireless telegraphy regulation giving the Governor power to license wireless stations, the earliest regulatory legislation on radio in Hong Kong. From laying cable to issuing licences: the pattern recurs throughout this history — the technology lands first, and the rules catch up.
3. The telephone: from 62 numbers to six digits
In 1882 the Oriental Telephone and Electric Company introduced public telephone service in Hong Kong, later renamed the China and Japan Telephone and Electric Company. Seven years later, on 5 April 1889, The China Mail published the first telephone numbers of the China and Japan Telephone Company — 62 in all, numbered 1 to 62, each held by a different company or individual, with calls connected through an operator.
Sixty-two numbers is a useful measure: the telephone was then a tool for businesses and institutions, not a household appliance. The operator system also meant that however many numbers existed, a call still needed a person to connect it — the idea of a network only holds once hands are replaced by machines.
Cross-border connection arrived on 1 September 1931, when the Guangdong–Hong Kong long-distance line opened and the Governor and the Chairman of Guangdong exchanged greetings, their first call. Post-war popularisation left more concrete traces: in December 1953 the telephone company installed its first 15 public kiosks on busy streets in Hong Kong and Kowloon, and in 1954 Hong Kong Telephone introduced its first 1,000 six-digit numbers in the Eastern District, all beginning with 7 and covering 770000 to 770999 — the local numbering plan moving from five digits to six.
4. From post office to regulator: one department becomes two functions
In the later twentieth century the Post Office did two things at once: it delivered mail and it regulated telecommunications. On 10 September 1973 it began providing Speedpost, sending commercial mail and parcels by air — the start of a move from universal service towards tiered products, where one network can sell different speeds.
On 1 July 1993 responsibility for regulating the development of the telecommunications industry passed from the Post Office to the newly established Office of the Telecommunications Authority. The significance is not the new name but the separation of operator and regulator: the Post Office kept providing service, while the authority wrote the rules.
Market opening followed. Hong Kong fully liberalised the external telecommunications services market on 1 January 1999, and the external facilities market on 1 January 2000. On 1 April 2012 the Office of the Communications Authority was formally established and the telecommunications authority was merged into it — the regulatory boundary redrawn once more for technological convergence, with telecommunications and broadcasting no longer in two separate queues.
5. Fibre and the Internet: basic research before the market
The Internet story has an easily missed upstream: in a paper published in 1966, Charles Kao set out the principle that optical fibres could carry communications, a contribution that led to fibre-optic systems and laid the foundation for the modern Internet. The reminder is that a communications revolution does not always start in the market — sometimes it starts with a paper.
The local timeline begins in the 1990s: on 17 December 1992 HKT Link International Ltd obtained registration in Hong Kong as the first local Internet service provider, with operations starting in August 1993. The Internet then moved from corporate lines to public utility — government websites, broadband and public computer centres followed — and the policy question changed from whether lines existed to who owned them and how they interconnected.
Set the three strands side by side and the structure of Hong Kong’s communications history is clear: the post established the idea of universal service, the telegraph and telephone established the idea of a network, and the Internet established the idea of interconnection. All three needed a regulator, and the regulator each time took shape after the technology had landed — that lag is the key to reading communications policy here.
Gaps
- This dossier adds no mail volume, postage levels, Internet usage rates or broadband speeds: official definitions have changed repeatedly and annual reports have not been verified, so no year-on-year comparison is made.
- The full timetable of telephone franchises, fixed-network interconnection arrangements and mobile licensing is not registered year by year; the prose covers only the transfer of regulatory responsibility.
- The technical and financial detail of submarine cables, satellite communications and spectrum auctions is not developed, and no total investment figure is added to the prose.
- Broadcasting (radio and television) and screen content are a separate thread, already covered by the culture and media dossier, and are not repeated here.
- Telecommunications charges, complaints and consumer protection figures are not included; any statement on service quality would first require verification of the Communications Authority’s annual statistics.
- Postal and telecommunications arrangements between the mainland and Hong Kong are described only as dated in the source volume, without the policy documents of either side.
