"Being a front runner, Taiwan stands at a very advantageous position in this new race," said Chen Chao-yih, the director-general of the Industrial Development Bureau under the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Local WiMax carrier Tatung InfoComm Co. Ltd. will begin operation early 2009 with the island of Penghu scheduled to become the first area to be covered in the country. Tatung is one of six companies to obtain spectrum licenses from the government in July 2007 to provide services of WiMax, or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. The other five, including VMAX Telecom Co. Ltd., Vestar Cable TV System Corp., Global Mobile Corp., FarEaston Telecommunications Co. Ltd. and First International Telecom, plan to start offering the service soon after.
Taiwan began promoting the technology in 2005 when the Science and Technology Advisor Group under the Executive Yuan unveiled the "Taiwan WiMax Blueprint" to integrate planning across ministries and related programs. The project's manifesto stated that WiMax would be a focus for the future of Taiwan's information technology industry, and the preferred option to deliver mobile access in the US$1.2-billion Mobile Taiwan Program. Launched in October 2003, the M-Taiwan Program is part of a five-year economic development plan aimed to spur the development of broadband applications in the country.
Currently, there are over a dozen companies in the country developing and manufacturing WiMax-compatible devices and equipment. According to statistics released by IDB, Taiwan produced around 420,000 units of customer-premises equipment in 2007 with the total output valued at US$84 million, representing a 20-percent market share worldwide. The bureau expects to see the nation's output reach US$8 billion in 2015 with a global market share of over 90 percent in this segment. "Given the country's efforts, Taiwan has a very good chance to become the world's major supplier of chipsets and base-station equipment as well," Chen said.
Compared with the current broadband technology in use, WiMax promises much faster speed and higher mobility over a longer distance with lower end-user costs.
"The current broadband access is like a two-lane highway during rush hours, always jam-packed with traffic," said Ian Lee, a project manager at the Committee of Communications Industry Development under the MOEA. "As users demand more bandwidths to transmit multimedia content, just like cars on the road are getting bigger, WiMax will be a multiple-lane expressway that can provide fast and smooth access over a much longer distance," explained Lee.
He also pointed out that with WiMax-compatible handsets, notebooks or mobile Internet devices, people will be able to do just as much as if they were using a desktop computer, though at a much faster speed. Indeed, in a live demo on a WiMax experience bus, provided by the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute, running in Hsinchu County, the transmission speed averaged 2.5 megabits per second. As an example, whereas it takes six hours for the current wireless broadband technology to download a DVD film with content capacity of 4.7 gigabits, it takes only one hour using WiMax.
In addition, given WiMax's expanded bandwidths, a lot fewer base stations are required to serve the same number of users. "This means that the total costs to end users will be greatly reduced," said Lee. Moreover, since WiMax can provide wide-range coverage, it is an ideal solution for "last-mile connectivity"--the network delivery between the backbone and end users--where laying or upgrading landlines of broadband capacity is way too costly, or no such access is available. For example, WiMax was used to assist in communications in the Aceh Province of Indonesia after the tsunami destroyed all the infrastructures there in December 2004.
"Telecommunication is not only the infrastructure required to foster economic development, it is an industry itself," said the director-general of the IDB. WiMax has been proven to be a viable solution, but Chen admitted that the country's decision to adopt WiMax as the next-generation wireless broadband standard three years ago had been a risky bet at the time.
To show the country's commitment to the technology, the MOEA has signed memoranda of understanding with nine global telecommunications powerhouses, including Intel Corp., Nortel Networks Corp., Motorola Inc., Starent Networks Corp., Rohde & Schwarz International and Sprint Nextel Corp., all from the United States, NEC Corp. of Japan, Alcatel-Lucent Inc. of France and Nokia-Siemens Networks headquartered in Finland. Several of these companies have established interoperability testing centers on the island or are planning to do so in the near future. All these efforts are aimed to make Taiwan the world's largest test-bed for the WiMax technology and operations, as well as serve as a model for other nations to establish a WiMax ecosystem.
In November, HTC Corp., the country's leading supplier of smartphones, launched in Russia HTC MAX 4G, the world's first GSM/WiMax dual-mode handset, in cooperation with its WiMax service partner there, Scartel Ltd. "We really believe that these innovative services, high-speed Internet and stylish HTC MAX 4G will completely change the communications industry, just as the introduction of cellular communications did many years ago," said Scartel's general director Denis Sverdlov.
In recognition of Taiwan's past achievements and effort in promoting the technology, the WiMax Forum established its Taiwan office in 2007, the fifth of its kind in the world, and organized its annual forum on the island. It also joined hands with ITRI to hold the first WiMax Forum Operator Summit June 2-3, 2008 in Taipei that attracted 54 companies from 23 countries. This was the first such event held by the forum to create a platform to share visions and experience among global WiMax operators. The WiMax Forum, the technology's major promoter, is an industry-led consortium established in the United States in 2001 with more than 500 members from services, component and equipment providers in telecommunications industries.
"Taiwan has been a hotbed for the development of wireless technologies, and now as one of the premier champions of WiMax through its commitment to driving the technology and products forward. It is only fitting that we are here today, discussing specific steps, best approaches and timelines to bring mobile Internet services to consumers anytime, anywhere," said WiMax Forum President Ron Resnick when addressing the summit.
The report released in conclusion to the forum estimated that WiMax users worldwide could reach 133 million by 2012, when the number of operators will double from the current 260 to 538.
Write to Meg Chang at Meg.chang@mail.gio.gov.tw