Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s top telecoms operator, yesterday said it aims to debut its 4G long-term evolution (LTE) services in July, earlier than the originally planned fourth-quarter launch.
The telecoms company, which won a 4G license for NT$39.08 billion (US$129 million) in October, had said that it hoped to have 300,000 subscribers for its 4G services when it commercially launches them in the final quarter of this year.
An earlier launch will help raise the odds of gaining more subscriptions, the company said.
“It is part of our financial forecast, which we always want to surpass,” Chunghwa Telecom chairman and chief executive Rick Tsai (蔡力行) said in response to a reporter who asked if the company was being aggressive in setting the target.
“We are endeavoring to [reach that goal],” Tsai said.
Chunghwa Telecom plans to deploy 10,000 base stations to enable 4G technology in the three-year period to 2016, the firm said.
The company has budgeted 10 percent more for capital spending this year, setting aside NT$40.13 billion primarily for 4G base station installation, it added.
As price and demand for voice services are on the wane, Chunghwa Telecom yesterday said it planned to boost its non-voice service revenue to more than 51 percent this year, from about 40 percent last year.
Separately, Taiwan Star Cellular Corp (台灣之星), one of last year’s 4G spectrum license winners, said on Tuesday that it had set a goal to launch its services commercially in the third quarter, ahead of other entrants.
As the spectrum obtained by Taiwan Star is operated by Asia Pacific Telecom (亞太電信) and will not be available until 2018, speculation emerged that Taiwan Star planned to acquire Asia Pacific.
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday that Taiwan Star planned to acquire Asia Pacific Telecom at NT$19 per share.
Asia Pacific Telecom said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange that the report was “total media speculation.”
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