Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) has accumulated more than 800,000 5G subscribers in the first year of its 5G launch, representing a penetration rate of 14 percent, the company said yesterday.
Subscriptions to its 5G services increased faster than it had expected, the company said, pushing up its penetration rate higher than local peers’, even though it had acquired less of the 5G spectrum than major rivals.
Taiwan Mobile attributed the rapid growth to longer service contracts, its news release said, adding that it lengthened 5G contracts to 48 months, compared with 36 months for 4G service contracts, to ease the financial burden of people opting to sign up for a contract with a flagship smartphone.
Photo: Pau Barrena, AFP
More than half of Taiwan Mobile’s iPhone users selected the 48-month service contracts, and about 80 percent of its overall 5G users subscribed to contracts with high monthly tariffs, starting from NT$999, it said.
Company president Jamie Lin (林之晨) told investors last month that the company’s 5G penetration rate would grow by 1 to 1.5 percent each month this year, implying that the rate would rise to at least 20 percent by the end of this year.
In the first quarter of this year, 5G users helped lift the company’s overall average revenue per user by 26 percent, it said last month.
The company has built more than 6,000 high-speed 3.5 gigahertz 5G base stations covering more than 70 percent of the mobile traffic, it said.
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) yesterday said that its 5G subscribers are expected to number 800,000 by next month.
It has deployed more than 7,000 5G base stations since its 5G service launch a year ago.
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), which also launched 5G services last year, had said that its 5G subscribers would number more than 1 million by the end of this month, thanks to users upgrading faster than expected from 4G services.
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