In its drive to become a true wireless city, Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority has published for the first time the statistics of local mobile data usage, which showcase a surge to 147 Terabytes as of January 2009, or an average amount of 44 Mbytes per 2.5G/3G mobile user for that particular month.

Apart from mobile data usage, the number of 2.5G and 3G mobile phone users has increased by 15% on a year-on-year basis reaching 3.35 million in January 2009. The total number of mobile phone users is 11.43 million and this represents a penetration rate of over 163%.

"We are pleased to see the remarkable growth of mobile data usage, which indicates that members of the public are increasingly used to deploy the mobile service for transmission and reception of mobile data. This is consistent with the trend observed in other advanced economies and demonstrates that Hong Kong has matured as a leading wireless city in the region," a spokesperson from OFTA stated in a press release.

This data, as of January 2009, represents four times and 14 times the mobile data usage over the same period in 2008 and 2007, respectively.