Chungwha Telecom Co (
Last year's dividend was NT$4.3 per share.
STOCK DIVIDEND
The company also said it plans a 10 percent stock dividend per share.
The board yesterday approved a proposal to pay out NT$0.909 per common share to the company's shareholders by canceling 9 percent of outstanding shares to boost return on equity.
After the capital reduction, Chunghwa Telecom will have 967 million outstanding shares.
SHAREHOLDERS' MEETING
The two proposals will be discussed in the annual shareholders' meeting later this year.
Separately, the Consumers' Foundation (
PRICES
Foundation chairman Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said that the six major telecommunications companies in Taiwan charged users an average fee of NT$2.13 for every text message sent within the same network, compared with China's NT$0.4 and Hong Kong's NT$0.68.
For text messages sent outside of their networks, the six firms charge users NT$2.53 per message on average, which is also higher than China's NT$0.6 and Japan's NT$1.4, Cheng said.
Cheng urged the National Communications Commission to pay attention to the issue.
He said the commission should work to have local telecommunications companies reduce their text messaging rates to NT$1.3 per message for intra-network service and NT$1.7 per message for inter-network service -- the most affordable rates currently available through a domestic telecommunication company.
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