As expansion of mobile Internet-access capacity is likely to catch up with fast growing demand due to increasing use of smartphones and tablet PCs, Taiwan's telecom carriers and equipment suppliers are urging the National Communications Commission (NCC) to adopt differential charge rates based on use volume to replace the current uniform pricing, according to industry sources.
Uniform pricing not only is unfair to users willing to pay more for better quality but also discourages carriers from investment to expand capacities, the sources said. Uniform pricing without limits to use volume has resulted in an unreasonable situation where heavy users of mobile Internet services - 2% of all users - occupy almost 50% of the bandwidth available, the sources cited survey statistics as indicating.
Philip Tseng, president for Ericsson Taiwan, and Mike Wang, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao general manager for Nokia Siemens Networks, emphasized the necessity of differential pricing to enable more efficient use of the mobile Internet-access resources.