The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said telecoms carriers from Taiwan and China will soon be able to jointly fund the establishment of submarine telecommunications cables, provided that the Chinese carriers can neither invest in nor operate Taiwan’s fixed telecommunications network businesses.
At present, Article 70 of the Regulations Governing Fixed Network Telecommunications Businesses (固定通信業務管理規則) requires that the networks provided by telecoms operators in Taiwan and China be linked to communicate via a third area or international telecommunications network, a rule that applies to the establishment of the international marine cable, satellite, communications exchange and adaptive equipment.
The ministry said in a statement that the cross-strait call volume had steadily increased since the nation allowed indirect telecommunications services between Taiwan and China in 1989.
The number of cross-strait calls now ranks No. 1 among all the international calls from Taiwan, the ministry said.
“In terms of the costs and technology, banning the construction of a marine cable specifically used for direct cross-strait communications was not the best solution to challenges encountered by the telecoms carriers,” it said.
Wang Ting-chun (王廷俊), a specialist at the ministry’s Department of Posts and Telecommunications, said the policy change would not allow Chinese telecoms carriers to invest in Taiwan’s type-I telecoms operators, including Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile and Far-Eastone Telecommunications.
The policy change will allow cross-strait telecoms operators to jointly construct submarine cables in Taiwan proper, the outlying islands as well as in China without having to go through a third location, which will help reduce operational costs and lower communications rates.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the