PacNet Steps Up Regional Branding with Hong Kong ISP

Nasdaq-listed Pacific Internet Ltd. of Singapore
[NASDAQ: PCNTF] steps up its regional branding strategy with the relaunch
of Hong Kong SuperNet as Pacific
SuperNet, and plans to gobble up a big piece of the consumer market in Hong
Kong.

Pacific Internet has been managing Hong Kong SuperNet (now Pacific
SuperNet) since 1996 when the Singapore ISP bought 50.1 percent of the Hong Kong
company.

Re-launched today, the new Pacific SuperNet plans to carve a niche in the
consumer market hoping to equal or better the success that it has achieved
in the corporate market of which it has more than 32,000 dial-up customers
each paying an average of US$15 a month.

In the pipeline are aggressive, multi-channel, lifestyle marketing, and
branding plans targeted at the mass consumer market in Hong Kong.

Pacific SuperNet will customize the marketing plans, modeling after the
successful
marketing efforts in Singapore and the Philippines, to suit the Hong Kong
market.

There is currently one Pacific SuperNet retail shop in Mong Kok,
Hong Kong. Plans are underway to set up more.

Subscribers of the re-branded Pacific SuperNet will maintain their
hk.super.net domains but new subscribers will be brought under the
pacific.net.hk domain.

“The network is getting less Singapore-centric,” said Nicholas Lee, CEO of
Pacific Internet Ltd., with reference to Pacific Internet’s effort to step
up its regional branding strategy. “On the whole, we [the Pacific Internet
Group] will form a larger ISP to compete with
those in the US.”

Currently, Pacific Internet has a presence in Singapore, Philippines, and
Hong Kong. Later this year, we will launch an Australia and India office,
said Lee.

Singapore is the biggest contributor to the group’s revenue now, he commented.
The expansion to Hong Kong is an effort to increase our revenue since the
population in Hong Kong is twice of that in Singapore.

With the addition of the Australia and India offices later this year, the
bulk of the
revenue will come from outside of Singapore by mid 2000, Lee said.

The newly launched Pacific SuperNet will work with Pacific Internet
(PI) in Singapore and the Philippines to develop e-commerce applications
and shopping malls using the existing PI E-hub infrastructure, logistics,
and services solutions already put in place as part of the PI network.

Pacific SuperNet has also recently re-engineered its entire network and
relocated its computer room to co-locate with Hongkong Telecom. Its
backbone has been upgraded to the same switched architecture used in
Singapore, achieving over 1Gbps of bandwidth and linking to three
international gateways for enhanced reliability.

The Pacific SuperNet network will be monitored both in Hong Kong and
Singapore, Lee said.

Pacific SuperNet currently offers a total of 16Mbps of bandwidth to be used
regionally. It is looking into the installation of a 45Mbps link from the
USA via an existing satellite transponder in the PI regional network.

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