Hutchison ran a loss-making Macau mobile network for 25 years, then sold it for HK$110M

Hutchison Telecommunications Hong Kong (0215) ran a mobile network in Macau under the 3 Macau brand for more than 20 years, registered in late 2000 and carrying customers since 2001. It was a small, perennial loss-maker in a market long dominated by CTM, the incumbent state-backed operator.

The Macau business kept bleeding money. Hutchison Telecom's 2025 results showed the group swung to a full-year attributable loss of about HK$25 million, and the company pointed to the Macau segment as the drag. The network contributed little to a group that was otherwise shifting its focus to fixed and enterprise services in Hong Kong.

In January 2026 Hutchison Telecom signed it away. It sold the Macau mobile business to CTM, a unit of Citic Telecom International (1883), for HK$110 million, booking a slim HK$2 million profit on the disposal. The deal folded 3 Macau's customers into the very incumbent that had outcompeted it for a quarter of a century.

The retreat capped a rapid consolidation. SmarTone's Macau mobile service had already been wound down in November 2024 with CTM taking over its users. Within about two years the Macau market went from four mobile operators to three, with CTM absorbing both rivals' customers and paring the field further toward a near-monopoly.