The government could launch transmission speed tests of the 4G telecom service in June next year following incremental growth in service users, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday.
The commission has been testing the transmission speed of the 3G telecom service since 2012 after receiving a large number of consumer complaints about the slow transmission speed. It entrusted the Telecom Technology Center (電信技術中心), a government-funded certification organization, with conducting the tests.
Because the 4G service was not launched until May this year and most of the 4G operators are still in the process of installing base stations, the center is only testing 3G transmission speed at the moment.
Facing questions from lawmakers on the quality of the 4G service, commission Chairperson Howard Shyr (石世豪) said last week that the commission is scheduled to measure the transmission speed of the 4G service next year.
Wu Ming-jen (吳銘仁), a specialist at the commission, said tests would be conducted twice every year. He said that the testing could begin in June if the budget appropriated to the Telecom Technology Center could be approved by the legislature without much delay.
Last week, the nation’s three largest telecom operators — Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Telecom Co (台灣大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) — announced that they would continue allowing customers unlimited access to the Internet by paying a flat monthly rate, despite their previous announcements that such a service would not be available after the 4G service’s promotional period finished at the end of last month, as originally planned.
The announcement came two days after new telecom carrier Taiwan Star Telecom Corp (台灣之星) said that it would extend its promotional period, during which subscribers to its 4G service can enjoy unlimited Internet access for NT$599 per month.
However, the commission said that a price war could potentially lead to deteriorating service quality.
“A small number of users could abuse the mechanism by downloading excessive amounts of data, violating the fair usage policy and subsequently slowing down the entire network,” Wu said.
A report published by the commission recently showed that the number of 3G network users has jumped from 6.2 million in 2012 to 12 million this year.
In the meantime, the data transmission volume has grown 86 percent.
Statistics from the measurement tests between May and July this year showed that the average downloading speed was 6.08 megabits-per-second (Mbps), an about 37 percent increase compared with the test results in the second half of last year.
The average uploading speed, on the other hand, was 1.10Mbps, compared to 1.13Mbps last year.
The commission said that specification upgrades in mobile phones contributed to the improvement in downloading speed. However, increased data transmission was the reason for the uploading speed slowing down.
“Unlike data downloading, data uploading requires a decoding process. When you have so many users with various mobile phones of different specifications, more errors would occur when the base stations try to decipher those codes. This would create interference in the transmission, which then slows down the uploading speed,” Wu said.
The report also showed that mobile communication transmission speed has a positive correlation with population density.
In terms of the average downloading and uploading speeds, the nation’s fastest mobile Internet service was found in Penghu County, whereas the speeds in Taipei were the slowest of 22 cities and counties around the nation.
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