Far EasTone boosts equipment spending

Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation's third-largest telecom firm, plans to boost its spending on new equipment this year by more than 50 percent to improve data transmission speed, a top company executive said yesterday.

The telecom company intends to invest NT$8.9 billion (US$290 million) on new equipment this year, most of which would be spent on upgrading its third-generation (3G) base stations to 3.5G, or High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) stations, president and vice chairman Jan Nilsson said.

As the market for voice services is nearing saturation, Far EasTone's investments are in line with the trend toward convergent services or better data-transmission services with bigger bandwidth and faster downloads, targeting enterprise customers.

The HSPA technology allows for a data download speed of up to 14.4 megabits per second -- three times faster than 3G technology offers.

Nilsson said the company's spending on WiMAX infrastructure would be much less -- NT$600 million -- as mature equipment is not yet available.

As such, Far EasTone plans to launch its WiMAX services commercially in the second quarter or third quarter of next year, Nilsson said. The company originally planned to launch WiMAX in the first quarter of next year.

Last July, Far EasTone became the only one of the nation's top three telecommunications firms to secure a WiMAX license, allowing it to provide the services in the south.

Far EasTone aims to increase the population coverage of its HSPA network to 90 percent by the end of this year. The company has more than 3,000 3G base stations around the country.

To further expand its revenues, Far EasTone will work more closely with fixed-line affiliates New Century InfoComm Tech Co (NCIC, 新世紀資通) and Internet service provider Digital United Inc (數位聯合), the company said.

The group will form four new business units -- consumer mobility solution, contents and media solution, home solution and enterprise solution -- to provide cross-sector services and improve cost efficiency, Far EasTone said in a statement.

Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation's second-largest telecom operator, last month carried out a similar restructuring plan with its subsidiaries.

As of the end of last year, Far EasTone had approximately 6.2 million mobile subscribers and controlled 30 percent of the domestic mobile market.