Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation’s third-biggest telecommunications operator, yesterday said it has garnered a 40 percent share of the local 4G long-term evolution (LTE) market, making it the nation’s largest 4G service provider.
Far EasTone on Friday last week raised their 4G subscriber forecasts by at least 20 percent for this year, as strong demand for Apple Inc’s new iPhones helped accelerate the adoption of 4G services.
Far EasTone now has 400,000 4G subscribers, the company said. That means the company’s 4G penetration grew rapidly to 3.5 percent of its total subscriber number within three months after the rollout, outpacing the average of 2.4 percent for the nation’s top three operators.
In South Korea, which has the world’s highest 4G penetration at 60 percent currently, saw its 4G usage reach 0.7 percent in the first three months after the launch in 2011.
Far EasTone president Yvonne Li (李彬) told reporters that the uptake of the company’s 4G services had exceeded its expectations and the company is likely to raise its 4G subscription forecast again for this year.
Far EasTone had just revised up its projection of 4G users to 600,000 subscribers, from earlier estimate of 400,000.
The company said that the average monthly bill of its 4G subscribers is 6 percent higher than that of 3G users.
Separately, Far EasTone said it is collaborating with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) to offer over-the-top (OTT) content service on its LTE network, which forms part of the company’s efforts to expand its broadband services to households.
Far EasTone plans to deliver audio, video and other media over the Internet through the OTT service as a lack of the last-mile Internet connection to households makes it a bottleneck for its Internet service provider (ISP) division to grow its customer base.
Far EasTone said its ISP division currently has 200,000 users.
Far EasTone will continue to invest in sourcing digital content, mostly movies, while Hon Hai will be the major supplier of set-top boxes for Far EasTone, Li said.
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