Global Mobile Corp (全球一動), one of the nation’s major WiMAX, or 4G, telecom operators, aims to expand to 30,000 users by the end of this year by providing diversified wireless services, including Internet voice service along with wider coverage, company executives said yesterday.
Voice service is a hot field for telecom operators. Another WiMAX company, Tatung InfoComm Co Ltd (大同電信), also said earlier this week that it planned to roll out voice service in the second half of this year as WiMAX-enabled handsets become available.
Global Mobile said its 4G technology is not only suitable for high-speed Internet connections and data transmission, it can also provide voice services at a much lower rate than existing telecom carriers.
This year, “one of the most important [tasks] for us is to deploy a network to offer voice service over voice-over-Internet-protocol (VOIP) technology,” Global Mobile president Stephen Tsai (蔡木源) told a media briefing yesterday.
The nation’s 3G telecom companies have generated as much as NT$200 billion (US$6.3 billion) in revenues a year from voice service, he said.
Global Mobile planned to offer VOIP services in the second half of the year, Tsai said.
Global Mobile is considering purchasing WiMAX-enabled handsets from HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s biggest maker of handsets running Microsoft Corp’s system and the Android system, and another handset equipped with chips designed by MediaTek Inc (聯發科), Tsai said.
Separately, the company said it planned to improve coverage by increasing the number of base stations to 500 units this year from the current 100.
Global Mobile, which obtained a WiMAX license to deploy networks in northern Taiwan, offers WiMAX services in Hsinchu and part of Taipei city.
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