The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) is working to improve the quality of mobile phone communications in railway tunnels, a TRA official said yesterday.
TRA deputy director-general Chang Ying-huei (張應輝) said there were a total of 126 tunnels with a combined length of 149km along the nation’s railways, but the tunnel between Nangang (南港) and Banciao (板橋) in Taipei was the only one in which passengers could receive a mobile phone signal.
SIGNAL COVERAGE
The Nangang-Banciao Tunnel is about 21km long and provides 2G as well as 3G mobile phone signal coverage.
Many of the TRA’s tunnels are located on the North Link and South Link, and some are quite long, including the 10km Hsinkuanyin Tunnel (新觀音隧道) on the North Link and the 7km Central Tunnel (中央隧道) on the South Link.
Chang said the TRA has guidelines for establishing base stations around the tunnel areas and proposed that different telecoms carriers could be assigned to cover communications in designated zones.
While the proposal has been under discussion for years, Chang said Chunghwa Telecom was the only operator that had built any of the required infrastructure.
The company has provided infrastructure at an underground section near the Taipei Main Station.
USERS
“Other telecoms carriers are not interested [in the proposal], because there won’t be many users,” Chang said. “Even if we tried to lower the rental fees of our optical lines, the incentives to build systems remain weak.”
The TRA had previously tried to install pay phones on trains, but removed them as mobile phones became more popular.
Currently, only train conductors and drivers are equipped with special mobile phones for on-board communications.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai
RSS