Chunghwa plans to start GPRS service by early next month

Taiwan's second-largest mobile telephone service provider is scheduled to launch next generation mobile Internet service in early August.

Chunghwa Telecom Co Ltd (中華電信) will bundle two Motorola Inc's handset models with its improved mobile Internet service early next month.

The state-run company has 5.1 million users.

This next generation mobile Internet service or GPRS (general packet radio system) is a wireless standard developed in Europe for use in mobile phones and wireless Internet devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs).

According to Nokia Co Ltd and Ericsson Ltd, GPRS is optimally supposed to transmit data at 115Kbps (kilobits per second), 10 times faster than the first generation mobile Internet, WAP (wireless application protocol).

However, because of small handset screen size and the difficulty of operation, using handsets to get online information has failed to catch on with the public in Taiwan, according to Liu Yu-lan (劉玉蘭), marketing director of TransAsia Telecommunications Inc (泛亞電信).

A senior official at Chunghwa said it would take some time to profit from the new service. "We don't foresee making profits from GPRS service until the number of users reaches critical mass," said Shih Mu-piao (石木標), deputy chief engineer at Chunghwa.

Since consumers were unhappy with the WAP service, Shih said mobile service operators will need some time to gain the public's confidence with regard to GPRS service.

Faster Internet service on a cellphone sounds good -- so, what's the catch?

In order to employ GPRS, users have to buy a new GPRS handset model instead of current WAP phones.

Chunghwa planned to package this new service with Motorola's PDA mobile phone A6288 or Motorola's P7389i for less than NT$4,000 each.

The transmission speeds of the two models are around 20Kbp.