Starting from yesterday, around 50 percent of Taipei City's population was covered by wireless Internet connections, and the figure will go up to 90 percent by June next year, the city government said.
The city's wireless infrastructure, or Wifly, made its official debut yesterday after trials started in September last year. It is part of the government's "M-City" (mobile city) project that aims to turn the city into a wireless haven.
With the wireless connection, residents can easily access the Web via their laptops or personal digital assistants, even saving call charges if they have phones equipped with Skype, an Internet-phone software.
It was earlier reported that the target date for 90 percent coverage was early next year.
"There are some technical glitches to overcome, such as a number of wireless signal disturbances in the public area, which delayed the progress of the project," said Oliver Yang (
He said that the company is working toward meeting the 90-percent coverage goal next year.
The recently completed second phase covers 28.2km2 of the city, with wireless connection extended to major business areas, including the Xinyi, Ximending and Dunhua districts, as well as underground malls connected to mass rapid transit (MRT) stations.
The first phase was completed in January this year, covering 30 MRT stations and 150m of their surrounding neighborhoods. The coverage was 20 percent of the city's population at that time.
Starting next month, Wifly users will need to pay a fee.
The proposed fees, which are pending approval from the city government, include a subscription rate of NT$399 per month, or prepaid rates of NT$500 per month and NT$100 per day, according to Q-ware.
As the contractor is looking for other business models to increase revenues, it doesn't rule out the possibility of lowering subscription fees in the future to attract a larger user base, Yang said.
"As Wifly now has around 60,000 active members for the free trial period, we need to see if the new payment model will work out," he said.
For more information, go to www.wifly.com.tw.
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
POTENTIAL demand: Tesla’s chance of reclaiming its leadership in EVs seems uncertain, but breakthrough in full self-driving could help boost sales, an analyst said Chinese auto giant BYD Co (比亞迪) is poised to surpass Tesla Inc as the world’s biggest electric vehicle (EV) company in annual sales. The two groups are expected to soon publish their final figures for this year, and based on sales data so far this year, there is almost no chance the US company led by CEO Elon Musk would retain its leadership position. As of the end of last month, BYD, which also produces hybrid vehicles, had sold 2.07 million EVs. Tesla, for its part, had sold 1.22 million by the end of September. Tesla’s September figures included a one-time boost in
RSS