The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday approved Chunghwa Telecom’s plan to reduce wholesale prices for its Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services, saying consumers would notice the change in their monthly fees.
In the past the commission asked telecoms carriers to reduce retail prices by periodically adjusting their coefficients, but -consumer groups have complained that consumers could hardly feel the difference.
Based on a plan submitted by the nation’s largest telecoms carrier, wholesale prices for the DSL services, including 2M, 3M, 4M and 8M services, will drop by 25 percent. The price of the 512k/64k service will drop by 38 percent. While the wholesale price adjustment will mainly affect Internet service providers (ISP) leasing electrical circuits from Chunghwa Telecom, NCC officials nevertheless called the change “a milestone.”
NCC official Cheng Ming-tsung (鄭明宗) said the wholesale discounts granted to ISPs would help reduce their retail prices to customers.
“Currently, consumers are given two separate contracts when they purchase services from an ISP: one from the ISP and the other from Chunghwa Telecom. When there is a dispute, the two often pass the buck,” Cheng said. “Now they [consumers] will have only one contract from an ISP, which consumers go to whenever there is a problem.”
NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said the commissioners considered 25 percent a reasonable adjustment, adding that consumers would feel the difference this time.
An estimated 400,000 ISP users will directly benefit from the price change, NCC statistics showed.
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