The president of Taiwanese 3G operator Vibo Telecom says that he expects Taiwan to be home to two million HSDPA users by 2009. Feng-hsiung Chang says that take-up of the 3.5G high speed wireless services is continuing to grow as data transfer speeds are improved and monthly tariffs now compare favourably to the charges for ADSL services with similar download rates. Chang told DigiTimes that there are approximately four million ADSL subscribers in Taiwan and he expects around half of these to drop their fixed broadband connection to take advantage of 3.5G wireless internet packages. Vibo Telecom has 4,500 3G base stations in operation, a proportion of which have been upgraded with HSDPA technology. The firm is in the process of deploying 1,000 new 3.5G base stations.

---

TeleGeography's CommsUpdate is powered by the GlobalComms Database, TeleGeography's authoritative encyclopedia of the telecommunications industry, which tracks more than 900 companies in over 150 countries worldwide. Subscribers to the free daily email service receive headline news and updates on nearly every market in the global telecommunications industry and gain free access to the CommsUpdate archive, going back to December 2002.

---