The penetration rate for third-generation (3G) mobile services in Taiwan is much lower than in other countries, a report by the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday.
The report said the nation's 3G penetration rate was 6 percent in 2005 and 14.75 percent last year. By comparison, the penetration rate in Japan was 22.7 percent in 2005.
NCC spokesperson Howard Shyr (
The report also said that 5 million of the nation's 7.35 million households have a broadband Internet connection, a penetration rate of 67.03 percent.
Of the 32.97 percent who do not have a broadband connection, 11.56 said they were willing to make the upgrade.
The statistics were revealed yesterday during a commission field trip to Lichia Village (里佳), Chiayi County. The trip was to allow commissioners to review the broadband connection infrastructure installed by Chunghwa Telecom in the Aboriginal village.
NCC Chairman Su Yeong-chin (蘇永欽) said the report would be submitted to lawmakers in the next legislative session.
Su said that the report would include suggestions on how government agencies could cooperate in advancing roll-out.
The report also described how the NCC had used the funds allocated to it to construct telecommunications infrastructure in remote areas in accordance with the wishes of the Executive Yuan, Su said.
Su said that the Executive Yuan had set a goal for every village in Taiwan to have a broadband connection by next year. The NCC was confident of achieving that goal by the end of the year, he said.
Su said the commission had identified 46 villages in remote areas that had no broadband service. Of these villages, 18 had no broadband infrastructure, he said. The other 28 villages had Internet services at a transmission speed of 256 kilobits per second because of their distance from the nearest service station, Su said.
Su said the commission had spent NT$100 million on the project in conjunction with Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan Fixed Network.
Chunghwa would construct broadband infrastructure for 43 of the problem villages and Taiwan Fixed Network would take care of the rest, he said.
The new infrastructure would make service with a transmission speed of 2 megabits per second possible, Su said.
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