By Chris Chang, posted Jul 12, 2011 at 11:59 PM, 588 views,

Taiwan Getting Massive Network Upgrade

The city where the Computex trade show is being held annually is now getting a massive network upgrade finally. The upgrades? First, free public wi-Fi is now available in Taipei city, where Taipei citizens could apply for free user accounts to access free wireless internet connection in publics areas. Second, the broadband speed in Taiwan will be increased to a ridiculously fast minimum speed of 1Gbps by 2015. Isn’t that awesome?

Free public Wi-Fi has been the best offer for citizens in a city, and this offer is finally available in Taipei. We are happy to know that the Taipei city government has just finished implementing the first stage of introducing free public Wi-Fi throughout Taipei. The service is first available in “indoor” public facilities, such as the subway, shopping malls, office areas, hospitals, and libraries run by the government, for a three-month trial period lasting from July 1 till October 1.

So, how does a person access the free public Wi-Fi service? First, you need to know that all people in Taiwan, whether they are residents or visitors from foreign countries or mainland China, can take advantage of the service. Next, to access the service, you will need to apply for a free account on the Taipei Free Public Wi-Fi access website, which thankfully is available in English. Users of smartphones, notebook computers and tablets are able to go through the quick 3-step registration in a few minutes, but one would require a mobile number registered in Taiwan. The site also provides handy instructions on how to access the network, see below:

For people living in other parts of the country, they can apply for user accounts online, while mainland Chinese and foreign visitors may apply with their passports and identity papers on their arrival at Taipei International Airport or at any of the tourism centers across the city. And we are seeing some good news over here, more than 400,000 Taipei citizens have applied for free user accounts on the first day of launch for the free W-Fi service.

It’s pretty good to hear that all smartphones, notebooks and tablets are supported for the free Wi-Fi service, but if you are thinking about lugging your laptop around to download torrents all day, you better stop dreaming since the free Wi-Fi only runs on 512k bandwidth. The 512kbps transmission speed may not be enough for people who want to play online games or download large files, but should be good enough for people who want to send and access messages, surf the net, and make online phone calls. If you are complaining the transmission speed is too slow, perhaps you need to be a little bit patient since the Wi-Fi network system covering all the access points will be continually fine-tuned and optimized in order to provide steady, high-quality service. Oh, if you are hoping for an upgrade on the bandwidth, sorry, the city government will not consider high-bandwidth service at the moment.

Next, the broadband speed. Chunghwa Telecom, the largest telecommunication service provider in Taiwan, announced in a press conference its ambitious plans to boost Taiwan’s telecom infrastructure to a insanely fast minimum speed of 100 megabits-1 gigabit per second by 2015. At the news conference, Chunghwa CEO said,

“The 10-fold growth in data transmission rate is fertile soil that can nurture Taiwan’s industry sector.”

And according to the company,

“The construction of broadband infrastructure aims to hike Internet-access download speeds to 100Mbps-1Gbps for home users and 1-10Gpbs for business users in 2015 and further to 500Mbps-1Gbps for home users and 1-100Gbps for business users in 2020.”

What’s more, the company will invest 200 billion NT (US $6.94 billion) for the broadband project, with sixty-five percent of all network equipment to be purchased from local manufacturers. And if you are living in Taiwan, it looks like you don’t have to wait for 2015 to experience the benefits of the infrastructure upgrade. According to a report on Taiwan Today, in this year alone, Chunghwa will install 2,000 Evolved High-Speed Packet Access base stations to increase Internet speeds of wireless broadband users. And they are doubling the number of Wi-Fi base stations to 30,000 by 2013, to offer more digital content through the Android Market. Wow. Why Android Market? How about the App Store?

Anyway, we think the massive network upgrade will bring better Internet experience to Taiwan citizens, and probably the foreigners in next year’s Computex trade show. As far as we know, by October 2011, crowded public places, the city’s trunk roads, and its main residential and commercial districts also will come under the free wireless network’s coverage. The service also will be available on the city’s 800 public buses. Even though the free WiFi only runs on 512k bandwidth, we think it is definitely enough to use maps and online English translators that could be pretty handy for tourists in the predominantly Chinese-speaking country. For bloggers, RSS should be no problem at all!

Source: TechOrange (1), (2) via TNW (1), (2)