Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) yesterday said it plans to spend up to NT$30 billion (US$1.01 billion) on 5G network deployment over the next three years as it expects half of its mobile subscribers to migrate to 5G services by 2023.
That implies about 3.54 million subscribers switching to 5G, based on the company’s 7.08 million subscribers as of the end of February.
To meet its goal of achieving a 50 percent penetration rate for 5G, “an investment of NT$20 billion to NT$30 billion is inevitable in the first three years,” Far EasTone president Chee Ching (井琪) told a media briefing in Taipei, as the company formally started its 5G services yesterday.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The investment does not include those allocated for private network deployment for enterprise clients, Ching said.
Far EasTone has signed an agreement to build a private network for chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科), with more than 40 potential enterprise clients in the pipeline, she said.
The company expects enterprise clients, which currently account for 20 percent of revenue, to gradually expand their contribution, she said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“Enterprise business is a growth engine for the company as a saturated consumer market is constantly driving prices lower,” Ching said.
Far EasTone said it aims to make NT$13 billion in revenue from non-telecom services this year.
It has budgeted NT$10.2 billion for capital expenditure this year, mainly for 5G network buildout.
Its target is to have more than 4,000 5G base stations installed by the end of the year, mainly in urban areas with a higher population density.
Having 1 million of its subscribers upgrade to 5G in the next 12 months is a “very achievable” goal, Ching said, adding that it would have been even easier to attain without the COVID-19 pandemic.
5G uptake might be a bit slow due to a limited selection of 5G smartphones, as fewer consumers can afford them, Ching said.
The company expects Apple Inc’s new phone and mid-range models by other brands to be launched either later this month or next month, which would help accelerate 5G subscriptions, she said.
A mid-range 5G phone would be priced between NT$15,000 and NT$20,000, she added.
Far EasTone currently offers three models — from Samsung Electronics Co, Sharp Corp and Sony Corp — which are bundled with its 5G rate plans starting from NT$599 to NT$2,699 a month, depending on data transmission speed and volume.
Consumers can get unlimited data by paying NT$1,399 a month, on par with prices offered by rivals Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大).
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS