WiMAX operators Global Mobile (全球一動), Tatung InfoComm Co (大同電信) and Vee TIME Corp (威達雲端電訊) yesterday announced they would offer roaming services, signaling a major breakthrough in the expansion of high-speed 4G services.
In 2007, the nation’s telecom regulator auctioned six WiMAX licenses to the three companies, as well as to three other operators, First International Telecommunication Corp (大眾電信), VMAX Telecom (威邁斯) and FarEasTone Telecom (遠傳電信).
While each operator owned a license to operate in a certain region of the nation and was given time to build the necessary infrastructure, the restricted coverage limited the uptake of the new technology.
Lack of killer applications and end products have also been blamed for the slow adoption of WiMAX services.
“The much-anticipated WiMAX roaming service has finally hit the market. This means the services will no longer be limited by geography,” Vee TIME president Yennun Huang (黃彥男) said.
Vee TIME had originally provided WiMAX services in the south of the country.
The roaming service will be available to about 8 million people, the companies said in a press release. Those areas include Taipei City, Hsinchu City and county, Taichung City and county, Kaohsiung City, and eight cities in the offshore counties of Kinmen and Penghu.
PROMOTION
Subscribers to the three WiMAX carriers would not have to pay for the roaming service during the promotional period until the end of this year.
Since late last year, local WiMAX operators have been offering 4G services. They have mostly sold data cards for users to access the Internet through notebook computers.
However, most WiMAX operators still have a long way to go before they can generate any profit from the service, according to the National Communications Commission’s latest statistics.
STRONGER COMPETITION
The statistics showed that both Global Mobile and Vee TIME, which own licenses to offer WiMAX in northern and central Taiwan respectively, lead other competitors with approximately 5,000 subscribers each. As the first telecoms operator to launch the service, Tatung has a total of 4,367 subscribers.
VMAX and FarEasTone have about 3,741 and 1,200 subscribers, respectively. First International has yet to start offering the service.
Most of the firms officially launched the service either at the end of last year or earlier this year and have so far only a single-digit number of retail stores.
A WAYS TO GO
“Having only 5,000 subscribers shows that the service has not reached economy of scale,” commission spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said.
Chen Kuo-lung (陳國龍), director of the commission’s business management department, said that it is coordinating among the operators and would try to remove barriers for the fledgling industry.
“They all have different operational strategies. Some of them want to focus on providing broadband service, others also want to offer Voice over Internet Protocol,” Chen said. “So far, one of the main problems they have mentioned is the issue of peering with the second-generation [2G] and third-generation [3G] service operators.”
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