Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信) is looking to transform the company into a top mobile service provider, aided by its extensive investment in new 4G services, a top executive said yesterday.
“At the end of last year, we formulated a three-year strategy to steer the company toward a new direction in the data-oriented 4G era,” president Yvonne Li (李彬) told the company’s annual general meeting.
The company aims to become the nation’s No. 1 mobile commerce provider within the next three years, Li said.
New mobile services are expected to exceed NT$5 billion within three years and account for 6 percent of overall revenue, she added.
Far EasTone has also set a goal of expanding its share of the enterprise telecom service market to 20 percent in 2017 from 15 percent, she said.
Far EasTone saw its net income rise 11.63 percent year-on-year to NT$5.43 billion. As the company is expected to launch its 4G services soon, it is expected to begin amortizing the cost of its 4G network deployment this month.
In October last year, the company won the A2, C2 and C4 frequency blocks for NT$31.32 billion in the government’s 4G auction.
The company has budgeted NT$13 billion for capital spending this year, mainly to build up its 4G network. The figure is up 26 percent from NT$10.5 billion last year.
Given a mature 4G ecosystem, including a broader selection of handsets and lower equipment unit costs, operators should be able to make a profit from 4G services faster than they did with 3G services, Li said.
Shareholders yesterday gave the go-ahead to the company’s plan to distribute a record-high cash dividend of NT$3.75 per share based on last year’s net income of NT$11.85 billion, or NT$3.61 per share, plus NT$0.586 per share allocated from the company’s accumulated profits.
That translates into a dividend yield of 5.48 percent based on Far EasTone’s closing price of NT$68.40 yesterday.
Li said the company would stick to only paying cash dividends over the next three years.
Far EasTone also said it is in talks with Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) to swap the 700 megahertz (MHz) frequency bandwidth owned by Asia Pacific Telecom (亞太電信). Hon Hai is the biggest shareholder of Asia Pacific Telecom.
The company is also close to reaching a similar deal with Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) to swap its 1,800MHz band, enabling it to expand its 4G services to the 1,800MHz frequency in September.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last