Hong Kong's oldest MVNO, Trident Telecom, will shut shop tomorrow having already relinquished its operating license.
Earlier this week the company ceased operating and returned its MVNO license to regulator Ofta.
Trident stopped offering mobile services on December 2 last year, when its interconnection agreement with PCCW was severed. Trident said at the time that the contract was being terminated “by mutual consent,” and that work was underway to find another host network.
Tomorrow it will halt the final vestiges of its business, its customer service and number porting facilities.
Ofta said Trident had relinquished the 400,000 numbers allocated to it, and that the regulator would make a special arrangement to allow mobile number portability for its remaining users for the next three months.
Trident gave a notice of closure on April 1 after being unable to find a fresh host network.
“In the service suspension period, Trident has been trying to liaise with other mobile network operators with a view to resuming its services, but to no avail,” an Ofta spokesperson said.
“Ofta did not revoke Trident's license during this period as so doing will halt further number porting and make Trident's attempt of service resumption impossible.”
Trident had less than 20,000 customers at the time of service suspension, and Ofta has since ported a total of 32,000 numbers - indicating that most customers will already have migrated to another network, the spokesperson said.
Trident became the first MVNO to enter the Hong Kong market in 2001, and its departure brings the number of MVNOs operating in the region down to seven, according to TeleGeography.