There are 3 major operators in Taiwan’s telecom market: Chunghwa Telecom; Taiwan Mobile; and FarEasTone Telecom. These 3 operators provide integrated telecom services comprising fixedline, mobile and broadband networks and the market shares are over 70% of total telecom services. Currently the telecom services have been liberalised, except that the mobile/wireless telecom services have to be allocated available frequency. In general, the foreign investment only caps certain restriction on the Type I telecom business and no further restriction on Type II telecom business.
In the market of terrestrial television, in addition to the public broadcasting group (so-called Taiwan Broadcasting System, including CTS and PTS), there are 3 other stations (TTV, CTV and FTV). In the cable TV market, there are 59 system operators and 3 programme transmission systems located in 51 service areas, and most of the system operators belong to the 5 major multi-system operators (Kbro, CNS, TBC, TFN and TOP), acquiring 70% of market shares. There are a few direct broadcasting satellite operators, but it cannot compete with the cable market. In the programme channel market, there are hundreds of channel providers, but only about 120 channels could be listed on the analog cable system, which most viewers are watching today. Foreign investment, either direct or indirect, is subject to legal restrictions on cable and channel providers.
The major way of internet access service is ADSL, FTTx and cable modem. Chunghwa Telecom is the largest provider of ADSL/FTTx and acquires about 70% of market shares; the leading cable modem operators are Kbro and CNS, acquiring about 20% market shares. In the mobile broadband market, the penetration of 3G service is pretty high, but the progress of 4G (currently WiMAX) is slow.
