Taiwan to issue six licenses for wireless broadband

Taiwan plans to issue six licenses for wireless broadband networks by the end of June, the government said Tuesday.

The six licenses will each last for six years, but will be specific to different zones of Taiwan. In June 2009, the government will issue at least one more license that will allow the holder to offer wireless broadband across all of Taiwan.

The announcement is important because it makes Taiwan one of just a handful of places globally to begin the process of offering wireless broadband licenses. It’s part of the island’s M Taiwan initiative, to establish WiMax as a way for people to access the Internet, even in the most remote areas of the island. Part of the idea is also to boost Taiwanese companies with domestic orders for WiMax gear, by promoting the technology.

The plan for the first six licenses is to issue three for a zone in the north, covering the capital, Taipei, the high tech heartland of Hsinchu and Keelung, a major port. Three licenses will also be offered for the area south of Hsinchu, including the major cities of Taichung and Kaohsiung.

The government decided to offer the licenses that way due to its experience issuing licenses for GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) mobile phone services years ago. During that auction, Taiwan was divided into three zones, north, central, and south. This time, the number of people in the north and south, and the number of Internet users in each area, were taken into greater consideration, the government said in a statement.

The licenses that cover all of Taiwan will be good for 10 years.

WiMax base stations can send broadband Internet signals to far greater distances than the Wi-Fi technology that WiMax is meant to replace. Although estimates vary on how far WiMax signals can go, in a densely populated place such as Taiwan, where users are not likely to be positioned within sight of access points, the distance should be between 2 kilometers and 4 km.