Banking on the public's holiday spirit, long distance carriers are offering big discounts on international calls to friends and families this month.
"Customers can save up to 64 percent via our services," said Chang Hsiao-tung (張曉東), international business division manager at Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信).
However, the holiday discount -- a first for Chunghwa -- may be due more to competition than to goodwill.
"[Facing heavy competition], we decided to offer large-scale discounts to fight back," Chang said.
Back in August, three private long distance providers -- Eastern Broadband Telecom Co (
The tug of war for international dialing dollars has reduced Chunghwa's annual international sales forecast of NT$21 billion by approximately 7 percent or NT$3.6 billion, Chinese language media reported last week.
Chunghwa's challengers claim they are scoring big.
"More than 70 percent of our sales this year came from overseas calls," said Kuo Ming-Chi (
She refused to elaborate on the sales figures.
Chunghwa's strategy to boost holiday sales -- and win back customers -- is to keep them on the phone longer.
"Under our promotional program, users get a 40 percent discount for the first five minutes. And another 40 percent discount will be given for calls longer than that," said Shen Shao-hua (沈韶華), a marketing chief at Chunghwa.
The same kind of scheme is also being employed by Taiwan Fixed Network and Sparq, with extra discounts for talking over six minutes and over four minutes, respectively.
The promotions will apply to calls to the US, China and Hong Kong between 11pm and 8am.
Most of the promotional programs end Dec. 31, while Sparq's extends to Jan. 1, 2002.
According to Chunghwa's statistics, with an increasing number of people doing businesses across Taiwan Strait, more than 30 percent of the nation's international calls now go to China, followed by about 23 percent to the US.
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