■ Labor
Sprint Corp lays off workers
Sprint Corp will lay off 2,000 workers, or nearly 3 percent of its work force, by the end of the year as part of an effort to cut operating expenses over the next three years. The job cuts will involve both Sprint's wireline and wireless divisions. The company employs about 70,000 people overall, including about 20,000 people in the Kansas City area. About 20 percent of the jobs that will be cut are in the Kansas City area, company spokesman Mark Bonavia said Monday. The cuts are part of the Overland Park, Kansas, telecommunications firm's reorganization around two market segments: business and residential customers. The restructuring is scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1. Including the layoffs announced Monday, Sprint has cut more than 21,000 jobs in just over two years.
■ Wireless
Rules for keeping numbers
New rules went into effect on Monday letting US consumers switch mobile phone companies without changing their phone numbers. Verizon Wireless, the nation's biggest mobile carrier, reported more than twice the usual traffic in its stores, while No. 2 Cingular Wireless said portions of its Web site were down for about two hours as the company added capacity to handle heavier-than-normal visits. The long-awaited rule change, which some called "wireless emancipation," has set off a marketing blitz by mobile phone companies, fearful of losing their customers and anxious to snare new ones from rivals. But while some forecasts suggested that millions of cellphone users might try to switch carriers on the first day, anecdotal reports indicated that many people were waiting to make sure the process runs smoothly enough so they are not left without service due to unexpected glitches.
■ Computers
Dell moves support center
After an onslaught of complaints, direct sales computer king Dell Inc has stopped routing corporate customers to a technical support call center in Bangalore, India. Tech support for Optiplex desktop and Latitude notebook computers will be handled from call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee, Dell spokesman Jon Weisblatt said on Monday. "Customers weren't satisfied with the level of support they were receiving, so we're moving some calls around to make sure they don't feel that way anymore," Weisblatt said. He would not discuss the nature of the dissatisfaction, but the Austin American-Statesman reported on Saturday that some US customers have complained that Indian support operators are difficult to communicate with because of thick accents and scripted responses.
■ Semiconductors
Intel downsizes chips
Intel Corp said on Monday that it has demonstrated a tiny computer chip built with the next generation of manufacturing technology -- called 65-nanometer circuit design -- which it expects will be ready for use in 2005. The 65-nanometer milestone is significant because of its tiny size. A nanometer is a mere billionth of a meter, meaning 10 million 65-nanometer transistors could fit on the tip of a ball-point pen. Intel said the development of the new circuits renews its confidence that Moore's Law, which projects the steady improvement in chip performance, remains in place for at least another 10 years.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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