Taiwan Star Telecom Corp (台灣之星) yesterday said it aims to roll out Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) 5G services next year, spearheading the foray into the 5G market.
“We have to think beyond the big three [telecoms] and offer services that are suitable and affordable for customers,” Taiwan Star president Cliff Lai (賴弦五) told a news conference.
Taiwan Star, which has been in the market for two years, plans to offer legacy services next year on the its existing long-term evolution network that can support NB-IoT technology after a software upgrade, Lai said.
“Those services are not new and some are already available on the 3G, or even on the 2G network, but they will become more affordable and more diverse on the 5G network,” Lai said.
APPLICATIONS
NB-IoT technology can be used to support low-power transmission of small data to massive numbers of low throughput devices, such as “smart” meters, Lai said.
It will also support IoT devices for planned “smart” city, healthcare and “smart” home services, Lai said.
The company does not have to build new base stations for the services, he added.
Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信), a branch of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), plans to invest in long-range (LoRa) technology, a rival to NB-IoT technology.
Asia Pacific is scheduled to hold a news conference on Tuesday to release details about its investments and creation of an IoT alliance to deliver long-range and low-power consumption services on LoRa technology.
Taiwan Star said it has joined the Asia IoT Alliance to speed up the formation of a 5G ecosystem and develop new IoT applications with other alliance members.
To facilitate its 5G development, Taiwan Star yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with telecom equipment supplier Nokia Networks to build a 5G laboratory and a 5G test network next year.
The two companies are also to offer qualification services for 5G core network equipment and cloud-based networking equipment, as well as for the integration of different wireless technologies.
Taiwan Star has about 700,000 4G subscribers and the number is expected to increase to 1 million by the end of the year, the company said.
Revenue is predicted to increase by 16 percent annually to NT$10 billion (US$315.36 million) this year, it 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