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Taiwan Mobile to Merge with Taiwan Star to Boost 5G Rollout

Taiwan Mobile to Merge with Taiwan Star to Boost 5G Rollout Image Credit: Valmedia/Bigstockphoto.com

Taiwan Mobile recently announced that it has officially completed the signing of a merger agreement with Taiwan Star Telecom (T Star). Taiwan Mobile anticipates issuing 282 million new shares in the stock-for-stock merger with T Star and forming a new 5G “Team Taiwan.” As the surviving company in the merger, Taiwan Mobile will emerge with a 100MHz block of the 3.5GHz band, the most medium frequency bandwidth capacity in the industry. It will also have 11,000 3.5GHz 5G base stations that will provide high quality 5G service to 90% of the population and cover 95% of Taiwan’s communication traffic.

 

The power consumption of 5G base stations transmitting in the 3.5GHz band is three times that of 4G base stations, and before the launch of 5G, Taiwan Mobile argued that Taiwan did not need four or five 5G networks, especially given the increasingly tight supply of electricity and the heavy footprints of power generation and climate change on the environment. Once this merger is completed, a 3G network and thousands of redundant 4G base stations will be eliminated, and those changes along with Taiwan Mobile’s smart, energy-saving systems will save 40 million kilowatt-hours in power consumption annually. Over the longer term, after T Star’s 5G network is taken out of service, annual power savings will reach 100 million to 200 million kWh, a substantial contribution to the mitigation of local electricity shortages and climate change. 

Integrating the two companies’ 60MHz and 40MHz blocks on the 3.5GHz spectrum will also provide a major impetus for accelerating 5G vertical applications and industrial transformation. Taiwan Mobile believes that private enterprise networks require dedicated bandwidths to prevent interference from public networks. 

Another benefit will come from the complementary nature of T Star’s 900MHz and 2600 MHz spectrums and the 700MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz, 3.5GHz and 28GHz spectrums held by Taiwan Mobile. In the future, the merged network will enable 5G NR CA with a carrier aggregation up to 7CA while meeting 5G demand for low-frequency penetration, medium-frequency capacity and super-fast high-frequency bands, capabilities that will accelerate the development of next-generation fields such as the metaverse, Web 3, and AIoT.

Author

Ray is a news editor at The Fast Mode, bringing with him more than 10 years of experience in the wireless industry.

For tips and feedback, email Ray at ray.sharma(at)thefastmode.com, or reach him on LinkedIn @raysharma10, Facebook @1RaySharma

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