Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) yesterday became the nation’s first telecom to debut its 5G services, offering tiered tariffs that include a threshold of NT$599 and flat rates, as it aims to switch half of its subscribers to the 5G network within three years.
Subscribers would have unlimited data transmission for monthly fees starting at NT$1,399 — the same flat rate as when the company launched its 4G service in 2014 — and they can subscribe to the highest-rate plan for NT$2,699 per month for faster data transmission speeds and larger bandwidth, the company said.
Data transmission speeds would be within the range of 500 megabytes per second to 1.5 gigabytes per second, the company said.
Photo: CNA
Hotspot sharing volume would be limited to 50 gigabytes, it said.
“To some extent, a flat rate is a requirement in Taiwan’s market. However, the tariffs are very, very low, compared with those offered in South Korea or Japan,” Chunghwa Telecom chairman Sheih Chi-mau (謝繼茂) told reporters on the sidelines of the launch event.
South Korea’s KT Corp charges fees equivalent to at least NT$2,040 per month and SK Telecom Co offers a monthly rate of NT$2,400 for unlimited data transmission, according to information provided by Chunghwa Telecom.
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times
The company expects half of its 10.5 million mobile subscribers to switch to the 5G network within three years, Sheih said.
The company expects to reach 1 million 5G subscribers in the first year of commercial launch, he said.
However, the company said 5G would not be a panacea for a persistent decline in telecom revenue.
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times
“It will be good enough to see a flat 5G telecom revenue,” Sheih said, responding to a reporter’s question about whether 5G would provide an opportunity for the company to reverse a revenue downtrend.
Chunghwa Telecom plans to double the number of its 5G base stations to 4,000 by the end of this year, compared with 2,000 now, he said.
The number would climb to more than 10,000 by 2022, he added.
The company plans to invest NT$27 billion (US$910.32 million) on its network infrastructure.
Separately yesterday, Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) said that it would launch 5G services today.
It also aims to boost the 5G penetration rate among its subscribers to 50 percent within three years, company president Jamie Lin (林之晨) told reporters at a news conference in Taipei.
During the period, Taiwan Mobile is targeting expanding its 5G network by deploying more than 10,000 base stations to cover 90 percent of the nation’s population, Lin said.
With new 5G services on offer, such as instant playback for sports and virtual reality video streaming, the company expects non-telecom services to contribute NT$100 billion to its revenue over the period.
Taiwan Mobile also plans to offer tailor-made 5G rate plans for mobile game players later this year, Lin said.
Taiwan Mobile’s rate plans are similar to those of Chunghwa Telecom, with additional free high-speed broadband connection.
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) is to launch its 5G services on Friday.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
RSS