After months of 'will they, won't they' SmarTone Telecommunications last week took the plunge in the personal communications service (PCS) mobile telephone market, buying the P Plus Communication network.
With Hongkong Telecom's purchase of Pacific Link's network earlier this year, two of the six new PCS networks have changed hands less than a year after they launched.
Of course, this was long anticipated by the industry.
However, now the cards have been shuffled, is this the end of the consolidation? This latest phase of takeovers has reduced the number of mobile operators to six from eight, although there are still 11 networks. Players such as Hongkong Telecom and Hutchison have three networks each. SmarTone has two.
In theory, these firms stand a better chance of making a PCS network profitable than a stand-alone operator.
They are able to gain efficiencies across their networks through co-location of base stations, joint use of staff and retail outlets and, in the longer run, by combining the GSM (global system for mobile telecommunications) and PCS networks into one seamless operation by using mobile phones that automatically 'roam' between the two technologies.