An interesting telecoms news story broke last week which touches on the very heart of the OPLAN issue.  It concerned PCCW - Hong Kong's incumbent telecoms company.  Like all such beasts, in its home territory, PCCW is a vertically integrated business comprising the local network infrastructure and a bag full of service offerings ranging from plain old telephony through to broadband internet and TV for the residential market and 'you name it' for the corporate market.

Richard Li (younger son of legendry Li Ka-shing, No 10 on the Forbes billionaire list) who put together PCCW in the conventional vertically integrated mould, found that the company never really took off and neither did its shares.  So it was not surprising that eagle-eyed private equity players (Australia's Macquarie Bank and America's TPG-Newbridge) could see unrealised shareholder value to the extent that they made an offer of HK$60 billion for all the assets - including the local network infrastructure.

Then enter stage left, China Network Communications Group (China Netcom) which owns 20% of PCCW and expresses concern at the possible deal which would involve Chinese telecom infrastructure falling into foreign hands.  On July 10th, Francis Leung, a local tycoon, pops up with an offer to purchase Richard Li's 23% stake in PCCW for HK$9.2 billion ($1.2 billion).  China Netcom welcomed this with the statement,  "We think Francis Leung's participation can help PCCW develop in a sustainable and healthy manner"....