One of Taiwan’s major telecommunication companies Taiwan Mobile will merge with a smaller competitor Taiwan Star Telecom (T Star), pending approval by the relevant authorities, the former said Thursday.
The deal has been approved by Taiwan Mobile’s board of directors, and it now requires the green light from the country’s Fair Trade Commission and National Communications Commission, according to Taiwan Mobile Chief Financial Officer Yu Jo-hsi (???).
With the merger, T Star will cease to exist and will be absorbed into Taiwan Mobile, with each T Star ordinary share exchanged for 0.04508 Taiwan Mobile ordinary shares, Yu said.
Other agreements under the deal include obtaining 100MHz of spectrum on the 3.5GHz band for 5G wireless technology, which will be the largest mid-band capacity in Taiwan’s telecom industry, according to local media reports.
The mid-band range, between 1 GHz and 6 GHz, is known to offer a balance of speed, capacity, coverage, and penetration, to facilitate high demand for connectivity, particularly in densely populated metropolitan areas.
According to media reports, Taiwan Mobile is likely to see an increase in clients to 9.8 million, as a result of the merger.
Yu said the merger has the potential to also improve efficiency of overall infrastructure investment, as it will allow for the removal of the 3G network of one of the companies, as well as thousands of overlapping 4G base station sites, thus reducing electricity consumption by 100 million kWh annually.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel