Tatung InfoComm Co (大同電信), one of the nation’s six WiMAX operators, yesterday denied it was considering a merger with a rival provider of the fourth-generation (4G) wireless broadband service.
“A merger is not part of the company’s strategy right now, but we are working with other vendors to roll out interoperability across different networks,” Tatung InfoComm senior manager Brandon Lin (林致豪) said by telephone.
The Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday reported that Tatung InfoComm was pursuing consolidation to increase economies of scale and competitiveness.
Taiwan has five 3.5G operators, but the market is dominated by the top three telecoms.
The government issued WiMAX licenses to six firms — Tatung InfoComm, Vmax Telecom Co (威邁思), First Global Mobile Corp (全球一動), Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), Vee Telecom Multimedia Co (威達超舜) and International Telecom Corp (大眾電信).
Tatung InfoComm, set up in 2007 under the Tatung Co (大同) group, rolled out WiMAX services in Pingtung and Hualien counties on Monday.
It already offered services in Kaohsiung City and Penghu and will expand its services to cover Kaohsiung County on May 1, company president Lin Ton-liang (林東亮) said.
Total subscribers are forecast to hit 70,000 by year’s end, he said.
Lin said providing network interoperability across northern, central and southern Taiwan was not a technical problem, and the firm was working on the business model with other WiMAX players.
“Interoperability will help vendors enlarge their market share and allow consumers to enjoy high-speed Internet connection anywhere,” he said.
Vmax Telecom also said a merger was not on the cards for now.
“We just want to focus on how to better serve our customers,” said Sylvia Chang (張美玲), Vmax’s brand and communications manager.
She refused to say how much the firm had invested in its WiMAX deployment, but said it expects to break even by the end of next year, if it could get at least 20,000 taxis to offer WiMAX and 60,000 individual subscribers.
Vmax differentiates itself by working with taxi service provider M-Taxi (大都會衛星). Five hundred taxis are already equipped with WiMAX-enabled mobile Internet devices (MIDs).
Vmax shouldered the costs for the first-stage MID installation for M-Taxi, but it plans to join hands with other operators to get 6,000 WiMAX-enabled taxis on the roads by the end of the year, Chang said.
Profits would be derived from partners who sign up for WiMAX taxi services and firms that air commercials on the MIDs, she said.
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