The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that it would act as an arbitrator if Taiwan Star Telecom Co Ltd (台灣之星) and Taiwan Mobile (台灣大哥大) fail to reach a 4G roaming agreement.
NCC spokesperson Yu Hsiao-cheng (虞孝成) confirmed that Taiwan Star has approached the commission about its effort to sign a roaming deal with Taiwan Mobile. The Regulations Governing Mobile Telecommunications Businesses (行動寬頻業務管理規則) stipulate that dominant 3G telecoms are obligated to provide roaming to new 3G service providers, he said.
After Taiwan Mobile and Asia-Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) signed a roaming agreement, Taiwan Star asked to sign similar agreements with Taiwan Mobile for 3G and 4G services on the grounds that the Telecommunications Act (電信法) bans a telecom from discriminating against other telecoms or users without justification, Yu said.
While the regulations stipulate that 3G service operators are obligated to offer roaming service, there is no article requiring 4G operators to do the same, Yu said.
Disputes revolving around 4G roaming between Taiwan Mobile and Asia-Pacific Telecom emerged after the carriers were found sharing Taiwan Mobile’s core network instead of building their own infrastructure and using the roaming agreement to ensure continuous communication in out-of-service areas.
The setup drew protests from Taiwan Star, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), who jointly urged the commission to prohibit what they saw as an illegal practice.
Taiwan Star’s request to form a roaming partnership with Taiwan Mobile was widely perceived as a move to highlight its illegality, which could lead to unfair competition in the 4G service market, observers said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching