With 5G services entering their third year, Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) is aiming to boost its 5G subscriber penetration rate to 40 percent this year from more than 30 percent last year.
It would be reasonable to see an increase of 10 percentage points this year, Far EasTone president Chee Ching (井琪) said on Wednesday.
Benefiting from an expansion of its 5G subscriber base, the company’s net profit and revenue would grow this year more than last year, Ching said, adding that more 5G subscriptions would constitute one of the key drivers of the growth.
Photo: CNA
Far EasTone has posted a 20 percent increase in average revenue per user (ARPU) from 5G subscribers’ renewals in terms of monthly fees, it said.
The telecom saw its ARPU climb to NT$724 (US$24) from post-paid mobile users in the third quarter of last year, from NT$719 in the second quarter and NT$708 in the third quarter of 2021.
As telecom services have become an integral part of people’s life, Far EasTone’s business would be less affected by the downturn in the economy, compared with consumer electronics companies, Ching said.
“People may cut spending on nonessential items when paychecks shrink, but it is unlikely that they would cancel their telecom services,” she said.
Far EasTone expects capital spending to be lower than last year’s NT$11.1 billion as investment on 5G deployment has peaked, Ching said.
The company also expects revenue from its “new economy” businesses, or nontraditional telecom services, including cloud-based services, 5G private networks and e-commerce services, to rise to 20 percent of total revenue this year, from 19 percent in the first three quarters of last year.
Asked about Far EasTone’s planned acquisition of Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信), Ching said she expected the merger to take effect in the third quarter at the earliest.
The acquisition is still under review by the National Communications Commission and is subject to the approval of the Fair Trade Commission.
Far EasTone expects the deal to generate synergies within a year.
This time was supposed to be different. The memorychip sector, famous for its boom-and-bust cycles, had changed its ways. A combination of more disciplined management and new markets for its products — including 5G technology and cloud services — would ensure that companies delivered more predictable earnings. Yet, less than a year after memory companies made such pronouncements, the US$160 billion industry is suffering one of its worst routs ever. There is a glut of the chips sitting in warehouses, customers are cutting orders and product prices have plunged. “The chip industry thought that suppliers were going to have better control,” said
Enimmune Corp (安特羅生技) has obtained marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its EnVAX-A71 vaccine for enterovirus 71 (EV-71), becoming the nation’s first enterovirus vaccine completely made in Taiwan, it said yesterday. After spending 13 years and NT$1.5 billion (US$49.77 million) on the research and development of the vaccine, Enimmune plans to start manufacturing and marketing it by the end of March, the company said in a statement, without disclosing customer order figures. “It is possible that the vaccine would not be included in a national vaccination program initially, and consumers would need to pay for it themselves,” parent
Vaccine skeptics blocking transfusions for life-saving surgeries, Facebook groups inciting violence against doctors and a global search for unvaccinated donors — COVID-19 misinformation has bred a so-called “pure blood” movement. The movement spins anti-vaccine narratives focused on unfounded claims that receiving blood from people inoculated against COVID-19 “contaminates” the body. Some have advocated for blood banks that draw from “pure” unvaccinated people, while medics in North America say they have fielded requests from people demanding transfusions from donors who have not received a vaccine. In closed social media groups, vaccine skeptics — who brand themselves as “pure bloods” — promote violence against doctors
Asteroid mining start-up AstroForge Inc is planning to launch its first two missions to space this year as it seeks to extract and refine metals from deep space. The first launch, scheduled for April, is to test AstroForge’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material. The second, planned for October, would scout for an asteroid near Earth to mine. The missions are part of AstroForge’s goal of refining platinum-group metals from asteroids, with the aim of bringing down the cost of mining these metals. It also hopes to reduce the massive amount of carbon emissions that stem from mining