The ongoing bidding for the nation’s fourth-generation (4G) spectrum telecommunications licenses has pushed the total bidding price to NT$87.04 billion (US$2.95 billion) as of Wednesday, local media reported yesterday.
The bidding, which began on Sept. 3, has seen prices climb 142 percent higher than the floor price of NT$35.9 billion set by the National Communications Commission.
The competition has mainly been in the 1,800 megahertz (MHz) band, particularly for the C5 block, with bidding prices reaching as high as NT$24.21 billion as of Wednesday, eight times higher than the floor price of NT$3 billion, local media reported.
However, analysts said higher spectrum costs would be a negative for the local telecom sector.
“Higher spectrum costs may not be matched by higher revenues, which will be determined separately by future tariff levels and structures,” Chate Benchavitvilai, an analyst at Credit Suisse, said yesterday in a note.
In addition, “higher costs will result in higher amortization and financing costs, which would affect earnings and absolute dividend even if payout ratio is maintained,” he said.
Benchavitvilai said a more fierce competition if there is a well-capitalized new entrant, such as industrial conglomerates Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) or Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團), would remain an uncertainty to incumbent telecom operators.
Barclays Capital analyst Anand Ramachandran also expressed concern about the downside earnings risks to major telecom players in the long term.
As major telecom operators like Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Mobile Corp (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) have failed to introduce better tiered pricing for current 3G services, Ramachandran said in a separate note yesterday that whether local carriers are able to mark up 4G services prices in order to drive higher revenue will remain one critical question.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained