Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信), the nation’s third-largest telecom, said price competition has waned somewhat in the domestic market, after bigger rival Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) scrapped a controversial NT$499 (US$16.79) rate plan for unlimited data usage.
Far EasTone president Yvonne Li (李彬) told a teleconference on Friday last week that “this [NT$499 service plan] is a short-term phenomenon among the big three,” referring to Far EasTone, Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大).
“We think that the big three have no intention of initiating a price war in a nearly saturated market,” Li added.
Price competition intensified last month, after Chunghwa extended the service plan to not only civil servants, teachers and military personnel, but also the general public, Li said.
Chunghwa Telecom canceled the plan at the end of last month, but launched new low-tariff programs available to those who sign up online, she said.
As the telecoms are behaving themselves and not making aggressive moves through their retail stores, competition is now back to normal, she added.
To attract new customers, Far EasTone last month teamed up with Line Corp, creator of the Line messaging app, in offering lower-rate Line Mobile services with unlimited data usage.
“This is a new group of users for us, as they are heavily dependent on social media to communicate. They are not heavy users of video streaming, so they do not need a plan that offers a high amount of data,” Li said.
Pricing on the Line Mobile plans is the first in Taiwan to be set according to the plans’ Internet connection speed. For example, subscribers to the NT$299 rate plan would have unlimited data usage at speeds of up to 10 megabits per second, while those who pay NT$399 a month would have speeds of up to 21 megabits per second. Only subscribers to the NT$499 service plan would have full 4G speeds.
Far EasTone reported net profit of NT$2.45 billion for last quarter, matching the company’s forecast of NT$2.4 billion, while earnings per share of NT$0.75 came slightly ahead of its estimate of NT$0.74.
The revenue contribution from new businesses rose to 9.2 percent of total revenue last quarter, from 7.8 percent in the final quarter of last year, with the figure likely to hit 11.8 percent by the end of this year, the company said on Friday.
Far EasTone said it has healthy cash flows and is confident that it will generate about NT$15 billion in free cash flows this year, compared with NT$16.09 billion last year.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
RSS