Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan’s largest wireless carrier, yesterday said it has set up a task force aimed at boosting its offerings of digital content on smartphones and tablets as it looks to seek growth in the expanding mobile content market.
Chunghwa Telecom is the latest domestic telecoms carrier to adopt the idea of offering over-the-top content (OTT) video — content delivered over an Internet connection rather than via cable.
The move is another step by Chunghwa to extend its offerings of video from Internet subscription TV services, or MOD. The company now has 1.3 million subscribers for its pay TV services.
“We cannot count only on telecom services to [make profits] as the market is shrinking gradually. Internet data centers and value-added services will be the growing areas,” Chunghwa Telecom chairman Rick Tsai (蔡力行) said at a news conference.
“We hope the OTT [service] provides growth momentum for the company. We hope to have a considerable number of subscribers this year, which we see as the first period of rapid growth for the domestic OTT market,” Tsai said.
Chunghwa Telecom has set up a team with about 20 members, Tsai said. The team is tasked with seeking strategic partners at home and abroad to supply content and to build a profitable business model.
The company plans to launch its own-brand OTT service in the first half of this year, Tsai said.
Tsai also said the company is making plans to bid for new 4G spectrum blocks after the National Communications Commission said on Wednesday that it plans to launch the second phase of 4G auctions by releasing 2,500MHz and 2,600MHz frequency bands in the third quarter.
Chunghwa Telecom now has 1.33 million 4G subscribers, representing 16 percent penetration rate. The company aims to triple its 4G users to 3 million and to increase the number of its 4G base stations to 12,000 by the end of the year.
In related news, Chunghwa Telecom said its subscribers’ personal information is not at risk following a breach of its SIM card provider Gemalto, which discovered its SIM card encryption keys were hacked in 2010 and 2011.
No breaches were found in the infrastructure running SIM activity or in other parts of the secure network which manage other products such as banking cards, ID cards or electronic passports, Gemalto said in a statement released on Wednesday.
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