■ Big spending on FTTH
Taiwan's biggest phone company, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), yesterday said it planned to spend NT$60 billion (US$1.85 billion) over the next five years on deploying fiber-optical cables to provide high-speed multimedia transmission for its broadband users.
Chunghwa Telecom expects users of its fiber to the home (FTTH) service to more than triple to 500,000 households by the end of this year from 150,000 currently, and to grow to 2.4 million households by 2010.
The FTTH users would account for half of the company's broadband users by 2010, the telecom operator said.
It said the FTTH service would replace the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) service.
■ BenQ to build Brno factory
BenQ Corp (明基) will construct a factory for LCD screen and monitors in the Czech Republic city of Brno, the project's local promoter CTP Invest said yesterday.
"We are preparing a site for BenQ which should be ready by the middle of the year," said Remon Vos, CTP Invest's Czech director.
According to the Czech news server aktualne.cz, the factory will have eight assembly lines capable of producing around 500,000 LCD screens and 500,000 monitors a year.
■ Formosa lowers prices
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) yesterday lowered gasoline and diesel prices, matching a move by larger rival Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油).
Domestic wholesale gasoline prices fell by NT$0.4 a liter and those of diesel by NT$0.3, effective 9am, the company said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
A TAIWAN DEAL: TSMC is in early talks to fully operate Intel’s US semiconductor factories in a deal first raised by Trump officials, but Intel’s interest is uncertain Broadcom Inc has had informal talks with its advisers about making a bid for Intel Corp’s chip-design and marketing business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Nothing has been submitted to Intel and Broadcom could decide not to pursue a deal, according to the Journal. Bloomberg News earlier reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is in early talks for a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at the request of officials at US President Donald Trump’s administration, as the president looks to boost US manufacturing and maintain the country’s leadership in critical technologies. Trump officials raised the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
RSS