No decision made on 3G licenses

date: 13th March 2001, source by: The Taipei Times Online

The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday denied reports it had finalized a decision to issue four licenses for 3G mobile Internet telecommunications.

"We're far from reaching a decision on this issue," said Lee Min-chung, spokesman for the ministry. "We're still waiting for the DGT [Directorate General of Telecommunications] to advise us on the Nomura report."

The Chinese-language press reported that the ministry had already finalized a plan to issue four licenses, three with 15MHz of bandwidth and the fourth with 10MHz of bandwidth. Lee denied this report, saying the ministry is still considering issuing between four and six licenses, and that the final decision would not be made until July.

Bandwidth is used to represent how fast data flows on a given transmission path. For example, an analog television broadcast video signal has a bandwidth of six megahertz (6MHz).

Japan's Nomura Research Institute, which is advising the government on its 3G licensing policy, issued a research report earlier this year advising the government to issue four licenses in the bandwidth amounts listed above. The report cited the saturation of mobile phone users in Taiwan as the main reason each licensee should be given a wide amount of bandwidth. Too many users on the system at once can clog the airwaves, leading to slow mobile Internet service.

The government only has 55MHz of bandwidth to allocate in the coming 3G licensing auction. Ministry officials decided to run the spectrum in the 2000 band, which only has 55MHz of bandwidth because the rest of the spectrum has already been allocated to the airlines, armed forces and other industries.

Lee confirmed, however, that the government may have more leeway in allocating bandwidth. Chunghwa Telecom Co Ltd is slated to cease operations on its AMPS mobile telecommunications network.

This system runs analog signals and takes up a wide spectrum. Chunghwa decided to shut down the system in order to concentrate on digital systems, mainly in the run-up to launching the new Global Packet Radio Service 2G mobile Internet service.

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