Douglas Hsu (徐旭東), chairman of Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信), blamed a lack of handsets for his company's inability to launch its mobile Internet service, GPRS (general packet radio service), at a technology forum in Taipei yesterday.
GPRS is the prelude to third-generation mobile technology, and is supposed to allow mobile phone users to download pictures, view stocks, banking and other information and perform other functions.
All of Taiwan's island-wide mobile phone service firms said last year that they would launch GPRS by the middle of this year. So far, only KG Telecommunications Co (和信電訊), Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and Mobitai Telecommunications Co (東信電訊) have launched their services, but the handsets used with it currently run at a top speed of around 20 kilobits per second, far slower than the system's capability.
GPRS is able to run at download speeds of 115kbps.
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