Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's top phone company, said yesterday that it was in talks with Viettel Corp to buy a stake in Vietnam's second-largest mobile operator as part of its efforts to seek growth opportunities overseas.
Tapping into the fast-growing and liberalizing Vietnamese market, Chunghwa Telecom said it had formed a US$30 million joint venture with Viettel to provide Internet data center services in Hanoi.
“This joint venture in Vietnam is the first step in executing our company’s growth strategy outside of Taiwan,” Chunghwa Telecom chairman Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) said in a press release yesterday.
The venture, Viettel-CHT Co Ltd, is the first overseas investment by Chunghwa Telecom and is scheduled to start operations next quarter, offering broadband leasing, Web hosting and disaster recovery services. Chunghwa Telecom holds a 30 percent stake in venture, while Viettel controls the remaining 70 percent.
Hochen said yesterday on the sidelines of a press briefing that Chunghwa Telecom was “also in talks with Viettel about cooperation in different areas.”
“We also hope to invest in [Viettel],” he said. “We hope to tap into the fast-growing market with our local partners rather than by ourselves.”
The Vietnamese government is planning to sell its shareholdings in local state-run telecom companies, including Viettel, and the nation’s biggest mobile operator, Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, but has delayed execution several times, Hochen said.
Chunghwa Telecom is closely monitoring Vietnam Posts’ planned share offering as it is interested in buying a stake, he said.
Vietnam’s mobile penetration rate is expected to rise at an annual pace of 23 percent from this year through 2013, Viettel said on its Web site, citing an unspecified research house’s forecast.
Vietnam, which has a population of 85 million, has a mobile penetration rate of only 40 percent, Chunghwa Telecom said.
Viettel has obtained trial licenses to provide next-generation Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) services in the country, and Chunghwa Telecom is in talks with the company to help it build a WiMAX network, Viettel-CHT president Yu Neng-ming (尤能明) said.
Yu, a deputy managing director at Chunghwa Telecom’s IDC department, was appointed to the post of president, as the Taiwanese firm holds two out of the five board seats in the joint venture and is responsible for appointing the president. Viettel will appoint the venture’s chairman.
Hochen said the venture aimed to break even within two, or three years after operation. If the cooperation with Viettel goes smoothly, he said Chunghwa Telecom planned to expand the partnership to provide mobile services in Cambodia. Viettel already provides mobile services there, he said.
Last week, Chunghwa Telecom projected that net income would drop about 10 percent to NT$43.6 billion (US$1.43 billion) this year, compared with NT$48.25 billion last year.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last