Chunghwa Telecom

Company Overview

Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信) is the largest telecommunications service provider in Taiwan. The company was founded in June 1966, following privatisation of the state telecommunications service under the Directorate General of Telecommunications which had been operational since the 1880s. Following privatisation, the company was listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in October 2000.

The company operated 2G GSM services over the 900 and 1800 MHz bands from July 1995 until a government mandated shutdown in mid 2017. 3G UMTS was launched in September 2006 over the B1 (2100 MHz) band, and upgraded to HSPA+ in 2011 and later DC-HSPA+.

Chunghwa launched 4G LTE in May 2014, becoming the first operator in Taiwan to do so. The network implemented B3 (1800 MHz) and B8 (900 MHz). LTE-Advanced was activated in December 2014, using 2C carrier aggregation of B3+B8 with 15 MHz and 10 MHz channels respectively. Following the acquisition of 2600 MHz spectrum, Chunghwa Telecom expanded its LTE-A network in March 2016 to include a B7 (2600 MHz) carrier, with 3CC CA, achieving peak data rates of 340 Mbps.

In July 2017 following the switch-off of legacy GSM services, the company implemented 4CC CA, refarming and using a second B3 (1800 MHz) carrier, taking peak data rates to 500 Mbps.

By Mid 2018 the company had implemented a raft of LTE-A Pro features, including 5CC CA, 4X4 MIMO, 256QAM, and LTE-U LAA, taking peak data rates to nearly 1 Gbps.

Chungwa Telecom launched 5G services on the 1st of July 2020, a day before its competitor Taiwan Mobile, making it the region's first.

Chunghwa Telecom IoT

The company contracted Ericsson to construct an end-to-end NB-IoT system in mid 2017. After almost a year, Chunghwa had completed a number of soft launches of its NB-IoT network which is understood to be using the company's existing B3 and B8 carriers.