The Taiwan Telecommunication Industry Development Association (TTIDA) lashed out yesterday at the National Communications Commission (NCC) for its decision to publicize information on the location of base stations nationwide, saying that it would make it more difficult to install them.
The NCC said on Wednesday it was working on a Web site that would enable people to see the location of base stations. The site is scheduled to be launched in around June.
The association represents Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile Corp, Far Eastone Telecommunication and Vibo Telecom.
TTIDA spokeswoman Liu Li-chau (劉莉秋) said yesterday that while the commission believed it was necessary to keep the public informed and said a precedent had been set by the US Federal Communications Commission and the Office of Communications in the UK, it had misinterpreted the two foreign regulatory bodies’ intentions in making certain information public.
She said the system developed by the Office of Communications was designed mainly to inform the public about network coverage in a certain neighborhood, not to tell people where to find base stations.
Although the NCC has capped the number of base stations nationwide at 17,000, it has asked telecom carriers to stay at least 10 percent below that number.
That was about as much as telecom carriers can handle, she said, adding that removing base stations would compromise the quality of communications.
“Consumers will not get any signal when they drive on bridges or freeways,” she said. “Nor will they get a signal when they are in a basement.”
She said that a base station, once removed, would take at least nine months to rebuild.
On average, telecom carriers are forced to disassemble 700 or 800 base stations each year, and the situation is generally worse in election years, when it is not uncommon that more than 1,000 base stations would be torn down owing to pressure from the candidates, she said.
In southern Taiwan, there are even people making a fortune by protesting on behalf of others to have base stations removed from buildings, she said.
“Telling people where to find base stations only make matters worse,” she said.
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