Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and China Telecom Corp (中國電信) yesterday announced plans to jointly build a submarine cable between Kinmen and Xiamen.
Construction of the submarine cable is estimated to cost less than 100 million yuan, or NT$476 million, with the two telecom operators sharing the cost, company executives said yesterday on the sidelines of a two-day meeting on Cross-Strait Telecommunications Cooperation and Exchange in Taipei.
The submarine cable project is still subject to approval by Taiwanese and Chinese authorities.
Leng Rongquan (冷榮泉), chief engineer of China Telecom, said the company was still in talks with Taiwan’s largest telecommunications operator about the project.
He said that construction of the cable would be beneficial to the telecommunications industry on both sides of the Strait, as it would increase efficiency and reduce costs.
Chunghwa Telecom’s chairman and chief executive officer Lu Shyue-ching (呂學錦) said the construction of the submarine cable will begin once it receives the green light from Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
“If development of the telecommunications industry across the Taiwan Strait could help reduce costs, we would lower prices to reflect the cost reductions,” Lu said.
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Hwang Jung-chiou (黃重球) estimated that the demand for third-generation (3G) mobile phones in China would reach 150 million units within the next year or two.
Hwang said China’s 3G mobile communication market offers 1 trillion yuan in business opportunities, with about 60 percent going to mobile phones. If Taiwanese manufacturers could get hold of about one-tenth of the pie, it would be worth around 60 billion yuan.
Mobile phone manufacturers and chip design companies in Taiwan will be the biggest beneficiaries, he said.
Separately, China Mobile Communications Corp (中國移動) yesterday voiced its confidence that the Taiwanese government would permit it to invest in Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信).
China Mobile on April 29 announced a strategic alliance with Far EasTone and plans to buy a 12 percent stake in the Taiwanese firm.
China Mobile vice president Liu Aili (劉愛力) said that while the company has plans to expand its stake in the future, it would not get involved in Far EasTone’s daily operations and would never become the firm’s major shareholder.
“I believe there is no vital difference between holding 10 percent and 12 percent. I don’t believe that the [Taiwanese] government will allow us to hold a 10 percent stake in Far EasTone, but say no to holding 12 percent,” Liu said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day