Right, these guys g1.com.tw/ will be offering pre-paid WiMAX in parts of Taipei City and Muzha as well as in Hsinchu. You need to put down an NT$2000 deposit for the USB WiMAX dongle, but you get this back when you return the dongle. You can then buy 1, 7 and 30 day access, with the 7 day access costing NT$300 and the 30 day package costing NT$1k. They offer 4Mbit down and 1Mbit up. Not a bad deal if you need access for a few days in the areas where it works, but the coverage is way to spotty so far imho.
How spotty? Could I work up in Maokong and get coverage? I would like that.
I doubt it, these guys also cover your area and they have a coverage map of Taipei www.vmax.net.tw/coverage/index.do
NT$456 a month if you sign up for two years before the 15th of May, 4Mbit down 2Mbit up connection, unlimited usage of course.
Slightly cheaper than prepaid 1-day and 1-week rates on the UMTS networks, I suppose. However, I’m also hitting 6Mbit/s down on UMTS (with a HSDPA 7.2 handset) and it covers most of taiwan metropolitan areas.
I like the extreme detail on the vmax site’s coverage map though. It’s quite detailed and I suppose they are proud of the coverage they have been able to deploy. That said, there are quite a lot of red spots.
Well, it should hopefully get better and Vmax is offering download speeds of up to 16Mbit if you pay more, but it doesn’t really seem worth it, but the 4Mbit up speed sounds interesting considering it’s NT$1,199 a month, so for anyone that needs fast upload speed on the move, it might be a good solution if it delivers anything near what they claim. G1 seems to top out at 8/2Mbit for NT$979, but they don’t have a coverage map of Taipei yet, only Hsinchu.