Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) is deepening its partnership with SK Telecom Co in an effort to outpace rivals in rolling out 5G services in the third quarter this year.
The nation’s second-biggest telecom operator yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding with the South Korean company, which would see the two companies integrate their 5G technologies and resources to develop new broadband applications for enterprise clients.
Their collaboration would focus on 5G network deployment, upgrading Internet efficiency and technology transfer, Taiwan Mobile said.
“As South Korea is the first country in the world to roll out 5G services, it has accumulated the largest number of 5G users. We hope to leverage SK’s leadership in South Korea to build up our 5G network fast, develop 5G applications and promote the user experience in Taiwan,” Taiwan Mobile chief technology officer Tom Koh (郭宇泰) said in a statement.
The two companies have collaborated on 3G and 4G network deployment and upgrades since 2013.
Taiwan Mobile last week secured 60 megahertz (MHz) of 5G bandwidth in the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) band, the smallest among the nation’s big three telecom operators, along with 200MHz in the 28GHz band for a total cost of NT$30.66 billion (US$1.01 billion).
The firm plans to double its capital spending this year to NT$14.47 billion, mainly for 5G equipment deployment, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
Taiwan Mobile forecast that net profit would slump 27 percent to NT$9.47 billion this year from NT$12.97 billion last year, due to rising operating expenses and costs, while revenue is predicted to grow 8.1 percent to NT$134.53 billion from NT$124.42 billion last year, the filing showed.
Separately, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) has spent NT$7.39 billion on purchasing 5G equipment from Nokia Solutions & Networks Oy and Ericsson AB this year, it said on Friday.
The firm plans to allocate NT$30.7 billion for capital spending this year, it said.
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