Assuming no road bumps, I’m looking to move to Taiwan around Jan 2023 on my Gold Card
I hope to settle in Taiwan for at least a few years, and see how things go at a professional and personal level, and also in the wider picture, geopolitics/economy.
In general I don’t like being bound by any contract period; if I have to be, one year is the acceptable and two years will make me unhappy but acceptable if absolutely necessary.
I did some research and read posts here about mobile phone packages, but I still had a few questions.
In a country I once visited, the mobile phone offers at the arrivals hall of the airport were substantially different to what you can get on the street. Is this also the case in Taiwan?
What does the contract period of a telecoms company entail? Are you free to break it with a penalty? If so, what is the penalty?
Are there telecoms providers who do not throttle 5G speeds after the data limit is reached?
It may be possible to bypass this throttling by user-end measures (effectively making tethered devices indistinguishable from mobile traffic). What is the legality of doing so in Taiwan? Even if legal to do so, what does the contract say about doing so?
Out of curiosity, what handsets are offered in handset plans? How do the telecoms providers make their money back? It seems that the only difference between SIM and handset plans is that the latter have longer contract periods.
How quickly do mobile phone packages improve in Taiwan (e.g. more data limits, speeds, more minutes, etc.) and if one is signed to a long term contract, are you locked into the old terms and therefore cannot benefit from improvements in the telecoms ecosystem?
According to the review linked above, the best telecoms provider is Chunghwa Telecom, or Far EasTone. Any stories of your experiences to share? Do you recommend another provider?
The cheapest option is to buy your phone outright and get a sim only deal for what you need.
There is no discount for getting a phone with contract, in fact when I last looked at upgrading my headset it worked out more expensive, so I just got a new phone and stayed with the contract I was on.
Also you can get a 2 or 4 week all you can eat sim for the airport to help you find your feet and look around for what you feel happy with.
Is that right? Don’t they offer here the usual plans where you get a free/discounted phone upon signing up for a monthly contract? I’ve never looked and have always used a prepaid SIM here, but I assumed they would.
Easiest option, bring your unlocked phone, using 2 pieces of id, buy a fet sim card at 711 (actually, less hassle at an fet shop). Use ibon machine to buy 30 days of LTE or 5G.
Fair enough. Some of the plans I saw here seemed quite pricey (like NT$999 per month), so I assumed there was at least some discount on the phone. I only usually top up NT$300 in data every 60 days (I don’t use much internet outside), so a monthly contract never seemed worth it to me.
I have my 299 sim only contract (I changed it into a 1m rolling contract years ago). 4g is fast enough for what I need on my phone and its true all you can eat its not been throttled yet. They keep offering to “upgrade” but I will stick to the legacy contract I have for along as I can.
I got a combo deal with Taiwan mobile that provides home Internet and unlimited phone for one low price. $999 Unlimited 4G PLUS 120 mbps home Internet using cable.
I had a prepaid GT SIM from the airport for a long time but I went away for a while and now that I came back it turns out they merged with FET and I’d need to show ARC to reactivate it (which I don’t have). This seems odd - has anything changed law-wise? Before the requirement was just an ID (or two).
So, I need a new SIM card for long term use. What’s the best deal at the moment?
My wife wants to cancel/downgrade her phone plan. CHT told her that she will have to pay a breakcontract fee. Ok, we understand.
They then told her that the fee to break the contract will increase until the end of the year before then decreasing. Basically the break fee is on a bell curve. Cheap at the beginning of the contract before becoming more expensive up until the midpoint. Then getting progressively cheaper the closer you get to the end.
This is where i am confused. I thought the fee would be most expensive at the beginning and gradually get cheaper. Why is it on a bell curve? Can anyone explain what i am missing?
So maybe they mapped out how likely you are to want to buy out of the plan. In the beginning, not very likely, then in the middle yes you’ll definitely want to get rid of it, then the closer it gets to the end, you might as well stick it out. So kind of like a bell curve. So they charge based on your likeliness or eagerness to want that.
