Ericsson AB, the world’s largest maker of wireless networks, plans to invest US$1.5 billion in South Korea over the next five years.
The company will set up a research center in South Korea to develop environmentally friendly and fourth-generation wireless technologies, chief executive officer Carl-Henric Svanberg said at a meeting in Stockholm with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, the presidential Blue House said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
Stockholm-based Ericsson also plans to increase the number of employees at its South Korean unit to 1,000 from 80, the statement said.
Lee, on a three-day visit to Sweden, said South Korea’s government was determined to provide a level playing field for foreign businesses to compete with local rivals.
The investment is expected to help boost South Korea’s competitiveness in the market for long-term evolution (LTE), high-speed wireless technology, backed by Ericsson, the statement said.
AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc are also opting for the standard.
Verizon Wireless, the biggest US cellphone company, aims to begin offering a high-speed network in all US regions by 2015 using LTE, which is scheduled to reach 30 markets by next year.
LG Electronics Inc, Asia’s No. 2 cellphone maker, said in December it developed a faster wireless chip used in mobile phones based on the technology.
The LTE market will be bigger than that of the rival WiMax technology, Skott Ahn, president of LG’s cellphone business, said at the time.
Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s second-largest mobile-phone maker, said last month it expected to increase network-equipment sales as more operators begin deploying the mobile WiMax wireless high-speed Internet service.
The Suwon, South Korea-based company has a share of about 35 percent of the mobile WiMax-equipment market, executive vice president Kim Woon-sub, who heads Samsung’s network business, said in an interview on June 24.
WiMax is competing with LTE to replace third-generation technology.
“Mobile WiMax will outpace LTE over the next few years due to its head start on deployments,” researcher In-Stat said in February. “Mobile WiMax already has commercial deployments, while LTE won’t be commercially available until late 2009.”
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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