Taiwan is at the leading edge of telecommunications usage according to official figures, with the level of mobile phone and Internet penetration in Taiwan last year reaching 45.3 percent and 18.3 percent of the population respectively.
"The results show that Taiwan is at the forefront of mobile phone and Internet use in Asia, with Taiwan ranked the second highest for mobile phone use and the third highest for Internet use among Asian countries," said Minister for Transportation and Communications Lin Fong-cheng (林?正) at a fair held yesterday in Taipei celebrating the Taiwan telecommunication industry's 118th birthday.
According to the Directorate General of Telecommunications under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC, 交3q3?q信總局), telecommunication liberalization has improved the efficiency of state-run Chunghwa Telecom Co (??華1q信).
Before June 1996, Chunghwa Telecom had 2,837 employees in its mobile phone department and recorded around NT$18.3 billion in sales a year. Therefore, the amount of sales contributed per employee, an indicator of the company's management efficiency, was NT$6.45 million.
However, as of June 1999, its mobile phone sales climbed to NT$91.90 billion and the number of its employees tripled to 8,199. As a result, the amount of sales generated by per employee rose 174 percent to NT$11.21 million.
Moreover, the level of mobile phone use rose sharply from 7 percent in 1997 to 45.43 percent in 1999. Compared with other Asian countries, Taiwan's mobile phone use only trailed Hong Kong -- with a 59.43 percent usage rate -- but was higher than Singapore's 44.6 percent and Japan's 42.97 percent, said Lin.
"Less than two years after private mobile phone operators commenced services in Jan. 1998, the number of mobile phone users in Taiwan jumped from 1.49 million to more than 10 million. The usage level has surpassed that of the US, Britain, Japan, Korea, and Singapore," Lin added.
In addition to rapid mobile phone adoption, another impressive achievement of Taiwan's telecommunications industry over the past 118 years has been its fast Internet uptake, said Lin.
As of June last year, Taiwan had 4.02 million Internet users, posting an 18.3 percent usage rate. That figure has put Taiwan at number three in Asia, trailing Singapore's 26.6 percent and Australia's 23.4 percent.
Lin also said that in 1998, Taiwan invested NT$81.90 billion in the telecommunications sector and investment continued to expand last year with an additional NT$68 billion being put into the sector.
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Moreover, with the continual development of digital broadcasting and fixed network telecommunications, the telecommunications industry is expected to stimulate roughly NT$410 billion in business over the next ten years.
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