Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation's third-largest telecom carrier, yesterday raised its third-generation (3G) subscription target by 40 percent for this year.
The company’s 3G subscribers are expected to nearly triple to 2.8 million this year, compared to more than 1 million last year, Far EasTone said. It had previously set a target of 2 million by the end of the year.
“The target is higher than our original estimate ... The uptake of 3G [service] is faster than we expected because there are more 3G phones for users to select from,” said Maxwell Cheng (鄭智衡), a Far EasTone vice president.
Far EasTone also boosted its 3G handset subsidies to as much as NT$5,000 per subscriber this year, up 25 percent from around NT$4,000 last year, said Philby Chen (李靜芳), Far EasTone executive vice president.
The firm plans to buy 1.3 million to 1.4 million cellphones to deal with the increase in new subscribers this year, Chen said, adding that one-third will be 3G phones.
On a monthly basis, the firm added an average of 20,000 new sign-ups this year, Chen said. But falling voice traffic and inflation has offset the growth in new subscription, she said.
“It will be difficult to rely on voice traffic to boost revenues. We are looking to new areas, including household services and data cards for growth,” Chen said.
Far EasTone aims to increase its data card subscription to 80,000 to around 140,000 users, Chen said.
Data cards enable laptop users to connect to the Internet using wireless telecom technologies.
Far EasTone is in a close race with Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s biggest phone company, to be the nation’s top data card service provider.
“We believe data card usage will grow really fast this year like in some overseas markets. We are bullish about this market,” Chen said, who said the growing demand for laptops helps boost demand for data cards.
Data card users may double to around 400,000 in Taiwan and may sustain growth momentum next year, Chen said
Far EasTone is offering a wireless Internet connection service combining Wi-Fi and 3.5G technologies, which allows users to browse Web sites at hot spots, or on the go. It expects to triple the number of subscribers to that service from 10,000 to 30,000.
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