Chunghwa Telecom & Singapore Telecom Hope To Fly High

TAIWAN: August 21, 2007—Satnews Daily—Originally part of the Republic of China’s General Bureau of Telecommunications, under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Chunghwa Telecom is becoming more and more privatized. The telecom industry in Taiwan was nationalized before the 1980s rolled around, but now there’s less than 50 percent government ownership of this telecom company who also happens to be the largest mobile phone operator in Taiwan. Word is that Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) is discussing a joint venture with Singapore Telecom (SingTel) to engage in the launch of a new telecommunications satellite. These two companies worked together in 1998 to launch the ST-1 satellite.



The partnership is absolutely necessary because Taiwan is not a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). This means the ITU will not assign an orbit to Taiwan and CHT will need SingTel for project completion. The expected time frame for a satellite launch, should such come to fruition, would be in 2012, just in time to replace the ST-1’s end of service life, expected by 2013. SingTel wants only Ku-band transponders, CHT wishes to have both C- and Ku-band, so the final satellite will probably end up with more Ku- and fewer C-band. This is in comparison to the on orbit ST-1 which offers 14, medium-power C-band 36Mhz bandwidth transponders and 16, high-power Ku-band 54Mhz transponders. The ST-1 is used mainly for DTH digital TV broadcasting, VSAT and uplink/downlink cable TV broadcast relays. The ST-1 was built by EADS Astrium and was launched in 1998.