Tech expert calls for fairness in move to LTE

The Taiwanese government will need to address fairness issues among local operators if it chooses LTE technology to build a national high-speed network. Simon Chang, a minister without portfolio and a former Google executive, told CNA in an interview that Wimax, which is currently favored in Taiwan, is likely to be overtaken by LTE technology. However, moving away from Wimax will raise issues of fairness for the operators that have already invested in Wimax networks. "It involves the length of the concession the government gave to Wimax operators to use their frequency bands and whether the Wimax licenses owned by existing operators should be released and transferred to third-party companies if the government wants to shift to LTE," Chang said. There are currently six Wimax operators in Taiwan but they only had some 133,067 Wimax subscribers at the end of last year.