On the eve of the planned suspension of flat rates for new 4G telecom services, people lined up outside stores of the nation’s major telecommunications operators on Oct. 31, while Chunghwa Telecom Co said it had to extend its opening hours to 11pm to digest the flood of signups.
Consumers who were on waiting lists to get an Apple Inc iPhone 6 were panicked about not getting unlimited Internet access in time.
However, at the last minute, the nation’s big three telecoms operators made a U-turn due to stiff competition and said that they would extend the promotional period for unlimited 4G services at fixed monthly charges. Obviously, the extension is a countermeasure to brace for subscriber losses after smaller rival Taiwan Star Telecom Corp said on Oct. 30 that its flat-rate packages would be in place for an unspecified period of time — alongside a price cut.
The telecoms’ decision to resume offering flat rates is a regression in the evolution of the nation’s telecommunications industry, as most of their peers in developed economies have scrapped unlimited Internet use when launching 4G services due to the limited spectrum available and for the good of their financial health.
To better utilize bandwidth, global telecoms — such as AT&T Inc of the US — provide tiered mobile data plans to replace fixed-rate plans for unlimited Internet use, or they offer fixed-rate plans with conditional data speed throttling for smartphone subscribers that kicks in when Internet use exceeds certain levels. In Asia, South Korean firms do not offer flat-rate plans.
The nation’s major mobile companies originally planned to follow global mobile companies by terminating flat-rate services when entering the 4G era, given that expensive network deployment costs — including licensing fees totaling NT$118.65 billion (US$3.89 billion) — will make reaching profitability an uphill job.
“We think it may take longer than we expected to scrap the flat-rate plans,” Chunghwa mobile business group president Lin Kuo-feng (林國豐) said.
Foreign brokerages also say that flat-rate plans for 4G services will erode profits of the nation’s major mobile service providers and the impact could last as long as 30 months, as a result of contracts signed now. Investors are encouraged to either reduce their holdings in the nation’s big three, or at least not buy those shares. Telecom shares used to be considered good investment targets because of lucrative cash dividend yields between 5 and 6 percent.
Apparently, consumers do not fully understand that they might not need to pay more than NT$1,300 per month for unlimited data use at normal data transmission speeds. Some consumers might overpay their mobile bills, while others might just become addicted to Internet browsing. In fact, consumers could pay half that price for a sufficient capacity of 5 or 6 gigabytes (GB) from local telecoms.
Local mobile data use averages 5.4GB a month on 3G networks, a survey released by Far EasTone Telecommunications showed. The monthly use surges to 8GB when consumers switch to 4G networks, due to increased video streaming. In South Korea, 4G users average just 3GB of data per month, a survey showed. Far EasTone said 80 percent of its 4G subscribers sign up for flat-rate plans.
So it looks as though Taiwanese consumers have excessively used or inefficiently utilized the available spectrum, due to mobile companies charging the same rates. Telecoms are responsible for educating the public to treasure the limited spectrum and use it effectively, as well as educating them on how to pick the right plan for themselves.
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
Before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can blockade, invade, and destroy the democracy on Taiwan, the CCP seeks to make the world an accomplice to Taiwan’s subjugation by harassing any government that confers any degree of marginal recognition, or defies the CCP’s “One China Principle” diktat that there is no free nation of Taiwan. For United States President Donald Trump’s upcoming May 14, 2026 visit to China, the CCP’s top wish has nothing to do with Trump’s ongoing dismantling of the CCP’s Axis of Evil. The CCP’s first demand is for Trump to cease US
RSS