Taiwan Star Telecom Corp (台灣之星) and Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) have been issued 5G licenses, bringing the total number of licensed local 5G operators to five, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday.
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) and Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) obtained licenses last month and started 5G services this month.
Taiwan Star yesterday said that it plans to launch 5G services on Tuesday, while Asia Pacific Telecom said its services would begin by the end of the third quarter.
The five telecoms acquired 5G bandwidth in a tense auction that ended in the middle of January, paying a combined NT$138.08 billion (US$4.68 billion), one of the most expensive 5G license auctions in the world.
Taiwan Star, which paid NT$19.708 billion for 40 megahertz in the 3.5 gigahertz bandwidth, said that it is building base stations in 455 business districts and other areas in preparation for its launch of 5G services.
Taiwan Star would have 1,000 base stations by the end of the year, mostly in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, the commission said.
It would team up with Askey Computer Corp (亞旭電腦) to set up small cell stations to provide better service, Taiwan Star said.
Asia Pacific Telecom, which secured 400 megahertz in the 28 gigahertz band for NT$412 million, said that it would launch a “5G Land” video/audio entertainment platform, taking advantage of virtual reality, augmented reality and streaming technologies, as well as cloud-based gaming.
It would work with international partners to provide content for its 5G platform and build a 5G ecosystem, Asia Pacific Telecom said.
With 5G technology, it would focus on smart manufacturing, smart energy, smart transportation, smart retail and smart medical care, providing comprehensive services to its customers, the firm said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained