Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信) yesterday said that it is accelerating its 5G network deployment to widen its service coverage and aims to install 12,000 5G base stations by the end of this year, compared with more than 10,000 currently.
The nation’s biggest telecom also expects its 5G subscriber base to grow to about 2 million users by the end of the year, one-and-a-half years after it launched commercial 5G services.
As equipment costs have declined, the company said that it would retain record capital expenditures of NT$43.1 billion (US$1.55 billion) for this year, with NT$15.7 billion earmarked for mobile telecom infrastructure construction.
Photo courtesy of Chunghwa Telecom Co
Rivals Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) and Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) have set aside NT$14.9 billion and NT$11.8 billion respectively for capital spending this year.
Far EasTone plans to boost its number of 5G base stations to 9,000 by the end of this year from 7,500 currently, while Taiwan Mobile has built 6,500 stations, without setting a deployment goal for this year.
Citing the latest performance test from Speedtest by Oookla, Chunghwa Telecom said it provided the fastest 5G download speed in Taiwan in the first six months of this year at an average 471.33 megabits per second (Mbps), outracing Far EasTone’s 389.69Mbps and Taiwan Mobile’s 242.15Mbps.
Taiwan Mobile and Chunghwa Telecom had the lowest latency at 23 milliseconds, compared with Taiwan Star Telecom Corp’s (台灣之星) 24 milliseconds and Far EasTone’s 26 milliseconds, the test showed.
According to a separate report released by Opensignal on Monday, Far EasTone in the first half of this year ranked No. 1 in terms of 5G download speed among the world’s 5G service providers.
With an average download speed of 447.8Mbps, Far EasTone beat South Korean ST Telecom’s 417.6Mbps and Chunghwa Telecom’s 391.3Mbps, the report showed.
It also found that 5G download speeds were more than 1,000 percent faster than those of 4G across six operators including Far EasTone.
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