Dante cafes to offer wireless connections

Dante Coffee and Foods Co (丹堤咖啡), one of the nation's largest coffee-shop chains, said yesterday it would begin offering wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) services today at its 70 outlets nationwide, making it the latest food and drink retailer to offer such services.

Fast-food chain McDonald's and Zhen Quo Cafe (真鍋咖啡) began offering Wi-Fi services at their outlets at the end of last year.

"We think the time is ripe to provide wireless Internet services for our customers in light of the increasing popularity of broadband technologies and notebook computers enabling wireless Web surfing," Roger Hsu (徐恆均), Dante's vice president, said yesterday.

Dante's Wi-Fi hot spot deployments were made possible through collaboration with Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's biggest phone company.

"Fast growth in our asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) subscribers convinces us that it is time to speed up the deployment," Lee Yen-sung (李炎松), president of the Data Communication Branch of Chunghwa Telecom, said yesterday.

State-run Chunghwa Telecom was cautious about rolling out Wi-Fi access points over the past two years because of the expense and lack of technology supports, Lee said.

Chunghwa Telecom hopes to increase the number of hot spots using its ADSL equipment in places such as coffee shops, restaurants and airports to more than 500 this year from 130 now, he said.

Yaw Jenq Technology Corp (曜正科技), which helped McDonald's and local enterprises set up Wi-Fi access points, said increased revenue from its wireless Internet business would result in a three-fold jump in sales this year, said Chyn Chi-feng (秦啟峰), a sales department director at Yaw Jenq.

Yaw Jenq, which also provides prepaid cards for wireless Internet users at hot spots, expected its card holders to increase to 1 million this year from 400,000 last year.

Despite the upbeat outlook, industry watchers said the popularity of Wi-Fi would take time to mature.

"The unexpected popularity of laptop computers with Intel Corp's Centrino chips last year is the major driving force for the optimism of an early arrival of wireless Internet services," said Lu Chia-lin (呂家霖), an analyst at Yuanta Core Pacific Securities (元大京華證券).

About half of global notebook computers will be equipped with Intel's Centrino microprocessors this year, an Intel official, who requested anonymity, told reporters yesterday.

According to a report in late December by researcher IDC, global shipments of personal computers are expected to grow by 11 percent to more than 152 million units this year from a year earlier.

"But I don't expect the services to make significant progress this year, though Taiwan lags behind only South Korea and Japan in offering Wi-Fi services," Lu said.

The high price of Wi-Fi remains one of several hurdles, despite the increasing penetration of ADSL technology in Taiwan, Lu said.

Lu said NT$1 per minute was too much to ask from local Web surfers who want to go online outside their homes and offices.

"The number of wireless Internet users is growing at a snail's pace," said Kagi Chen (陳佳宜), who tracks the industry for local market researcher Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所).

Only 11 percent of Taiwan's 23 million people use Wi-Fi wireless technologies to get on the Internet, according to a report released in January by the Taiwan Network Information Center (台灣網路資訊中心), a government-funded researcher.