Telecoms are soon to be required to report disrupted service due to facility malfunctions to administrative authorities, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday, adding they would be required to file a report within 15 minutes after they have been working to solve the problem for at least 30 minutes.
Telecoms failing to comply with the rule would face a fine of between NT$300,000 and NT$3 million (US$9,928 and US$99,279) and would be required to address the problem within a designated period of time, based on Article 63 of the Telecommunications Act (電信法).
Should the problem persist, the commission could either continue fining the carrier until the problem is addressed or revoke its operating license.
Disruption of telecom services caused by malfunctioning facilities has come under public scrutiny after Chunghwa Telecom told its users on April 22 that they would experience slight delays in its HiNet Internet service because its submarine cable system, Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2, was broken.
The company said the cable was snapped either by fishing trawlers or because of rust, and estimated that normal Internet connection speeds would resume on Monday.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Mobile subscribers early on Tuesday last week were unable to access the Internet on their mobile phones for 25 minutes.
Department of Network Infrastructure deputy director Hsu Kuo-gen (徐國根) said the commission — through amendments of the Regulations for Administration of Fixed Network Telecommunications Business and the Regulations for Administration of Mobile Broadband Businesses — has stipulated the procedures that telecoms should undertake when handling service disruptions.
Because the amendments have not been made public, the commission cannot use them in their handling of the cases, Hsu said.
However, Hsu said it has asked Chunghwa Telecom to borrow bandwidth from other submarine cable operators before it fixes the damaged cable, adding that the company has secured 120 Gigabits per second to help ease Internet traffic congestion.
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
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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