With

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

's small population (about 680,000) and market, only a few local media options are available for the local people. Because radio signals, newspapers and magazines from Hong Kong are available in Macau, the local media are always a minority group in terms of sales and number of viewers.

Newspapers

There are eighteen newspapers (twelve in Chinese, four in Portuguese and two in English). ''O Mun Yat Po'' or '' Macau Daily News'') is owned by the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

and has the largest circulation (4,000). Additionally, Chinese-language newspapers from Hong Kong are popular. Macau has eight Chinese-language, three Portuguese-language and two English-language dailies. The ''

Macau Daily Times The ''Macau Daily Times'' () is a daily English-language newspapers published in Macau, launched on 1 June 2007. Overview The paper started life among one English and several Chinese and Portuguese language newspapers. It consists of betwe ...

'' is Macau's only English-language newspaper edited seven days a week. ''Macau Post Daily'' is published from Monday to Friday. It is owned by a local publishing company, Everbright Co. Ltd., which is locally owned.

Radio

There are 250,000 radios; two twenty-hour FM radio stations, one Portuguese, one Chinese; and four AM stations. Hong Kong radio stations also are popular in Macau. * Radio broadcast stations: AM 1, FM 2, shortwave 0 (2005) * Radios: 160,000 (1997)

Television

There are 70,300 television sets (1997 estimate); two general television channels from TDM: one Portuguese and one Chinese. Hong Kong television networks TVB and

ViuTV ViuTV is a Cantonese language Generalist channel, general entertainment television channel in Hong Kong operated by HK Television Entertainment (HKTVE), whose parent company PCCW also operates the IPTV platform Now TV (Hong Kong), Now TV and the ...

can be received and are widely watched by Macau residents. * Television broadcast stations: 3 (2006) * Televisions: 49,000 (1997) Macau government owns the television station called TDM. It has 16 digital television channels (6 channels are its own channel, 1 channel for transmitting TDM radio, 9 channels are transmitting television channels from mainland China).

Telephone

The number of telephone lines has been increasing since the mid-1990s. In 1997 there were 222,456 telephones; by 1999, 300,066 lines were in use. In 1999 there were 686 telephone lines per 1,000 people. Cellular-telephone-use statistics were not available. International access is via Hong Kong and Mainland China and via

Intelsat Intelsat S.A. (formerly Intel-Sat, Intelsat) is a Luxembourgish-American multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons, Virginia, United States. Originally formed ...

(

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel-Lucent S.A. () was a multinational telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, France. The company focused on Fixed line telephone, fixed, Mobile phone, mobile and telecommunications convergence, ...

was granted a contract in February 2007 to collocate a

CDMA2000 CDMA2000 (also known as C2K or IMT Multi‑Carrier (IMT‑MC)) is a family of 3G mobile technology standards for sending voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. It is developed by 3GPP2 as a backwards-compatib ...

1xEV-DO (Revision A) high-speed

wireless network A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking allows homes, telecommunications networks, and business installations to avoid the costly process of introducing cables int ...

in Macau for

China Unicom China United Network Communications Group (China Unicom) is a Chinese state-owned telecommunications operator. Originally founded (on January 6 2009) as a wireless paging and GSM mobile operator, it currently provides a range of services inclu ...

. Following the completion of the upgrades in related

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

and hardware, China Unicom will be equipped with the facilities needed to provide high-speed mobile data services for users in Macau, including

broadcasting Broadcasting is the data distribution, distribution of sound, audio audiovisual content to dispersed audiences via a electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), ...

and

video telephony Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Videophones'' are ...

. * Telephone main lines in use: 175,592 (July 2006) * Mobile cellular telephones: 325,016 (July 2006) Telephone system: fairly modern communication facilities maintained for domestic and international services * domestic: N/A * international: HF radiotelephone communication facility; access to international communications carriers provided via Hong Kong and Mainland China; satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Indian Ocean) * Users: 88,653 (2005) CTM is the only carrier to offer

eSIM An eSIM (embedded SIM) is a form of SIM card that is embedded directly into a device as software installed onto a eUICC chip. First released in March 2016, eSIM is a global specification by the GSMA that enables remote SIM provisioning; end ...

. 3 Macau is the only carrier to offer VoWiFi. SmarTone MAC is the only carrier not yet to offer

VoLTE Voice over Long-Term Evolution (acronym VoLTE) is an LTE high-speed wireless communication standard for voice calls and SMS using mobile phones and data terminals. VoLTE has up to three times more voice and data capacity than older 3G UMTS an ...

, till its operation ceased. On 21 August 2024, The Macau SAR Government has received an application from SmarTone to forgo the 4G license and plans to cease renewing the 3G license after expiration. According to the Post and Telecommunications Bureau (CTT), SmarTone (at that time) had a relatively small market share in Macau, only a single-digit percentage.

Mobile phone operators

Decommissioning of GSM

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

mobile phone networks for consumers in Macau were set to be decommissioned in July 2012. Networks will only be left in place for visitors to roam onto. The planned shutdown will make Macau be the first region in the world to phase out networks using the GSM standard, but it was postponed until 2019.

Internet

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

s (ISPs): CTM ( Companhia de Telecomunicações de Macau S.A.R.L.), MTel

Country code A country code is a short alphanumeric identification code for countries and dependent areas. Its primary use is in data processing and communications. Several identification systems have been developed. The term ''country code'' frequently re ...

(Top level domain): .mo

Broadband Internet access

The Macao Telecommunications Company (CTM) in 2000 launched the first

broadband Internet In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide- bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Internet access. The transmission m ...

access in the territory, on a network built by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

.Macao Telecom Launches Broadband Internet Service
/ref> MTel Telecommunications also provides broadband internet service and is CTM's main competitor, though much smaller market share.

Censorship

Macau is outside the

Great Firewall The Great Firewall (GFW; ) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the China, People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected ...

, therefore there is no internet censorship besides illegal content in Macau.

References and notes

External links

CIA - The World Factbook - Macau
{{DEFAULTSORT:Telecommunications In Macau