About 4.45 million customers of Chunghwa Telecom’s (CHT) fixed network service are to benefit from a comprehensive price cut after its retail monthly rates for different asymmetric digital subscribers’ line (ADSL) and fiber optics services were approved by the National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday.
The rates — set to take effect yesterday — would drop by 3.99 percent to 4.3 percent, the commission said, adding that this is a reduction of between NT$5 and NT$23.
About 1.4 million ADSL service subscribers are to receive the trim, with a total of NT$148.1 million (US$4.72 million) deducted from their bills per year.
A bigger price cut is to be seen by those subscribing to the firm’s fiber optics Internet service, with 3.05 million users set to benefit.
The cut will help some fiber optics customers save about NT$841 million per year.
However, that the cut does not apply to subscribers of fiber-to-the-home or fiber-to-the-building services, the commission said.
NCC spokesperson Yu Hsiao-cheng (虞孝成) said that the new monthly rate would be effective until March 31 next year.
Based on the Administrative Regulation Governing Tariffs of Type I Telecommunications Enterprises (第一類電信事業資費管理辦法), telecom service rates are regulated with a price cap.
The commission announced on Feb.7, 2013, the adjustment coefficient, also known as the X value.
The percentage of the service charge decrease is then determined by subtracting X from the Consumer Price Index for the previous year, which is announced by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
Using the formula, Chunghwa Telecom was supposed to reduce its service charge by 3.9749 percent this year.
Meanwhile, CHT lowered its private Internet peering charge with other telecoms by 4.14 percent to NT$394 per megabits-per-second.
In related news, ETTV News (東森新聞) and the TVBS Entertainment Channel were fined NT$300,000 and NT$200,000 respectively for violating a regulation requiring stations to keep a clear separation between TV commercials and program content.
ETTV News was fined for airing news on Taiwanese pop diva Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) acting as an entertainment news anchor for the station, which was found to have helped advertise Tsai’s new album.
TVBS was found to have advertised HTC smartphones in one of its programs. The channel received the warning from the NCC in 2013 for abnormally high coverage of HTC-related news.
HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) is a major shareholder in Hong Kong-based TVB, which owns 47 percent of its subsidiary, TVBS.
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