Chunghwa Telecom Company (CH) and Taicom Data System Co., Ltd. have announced jointly an ISDN service, ready to accept applications by subscribers as of November 1999. The joint project was signed into contract on October 25 by Chunghwa Telecom VP Chen Rui-hsiung and Taicom's President Tseng Huan-sheng.

Under the arrangement, the ISDN circuit is to be provided by CH's ISDN exchange and is connected with the subscriber's terminal adapter (TA) through the conventional telephone line. Since the TA possesses two 64KB channels, it offers the subscriber a second telephone line, allowing users to be linked on-line one the one hand and, on the other hand, chat with friend over the phone. In addition, all value-added functions such as G4 fax, display of incoming calls, re-connection of incoming calls, call waiting, follow-up of incoming calls, three-party conferencing, and video conferencing are the very fundamental functions that come with the ISDN service.

The fee for the CH/Taicom ISDN all-in-one service is NT$3,999 that includes an ISDN number + hi-net.com subscription and excludes the refundable NT$3,000 deposit. Further, during the promotion period from November 1, 1999 to January 31, 2000, all subscribers may enjoy the following privileges to have high-quality on-line service at low cost:

1. CH ISDN access fee is reduced from NT$3,000 to NT$1,000, free equipment inspection (regular fee of NT$550), free HiNet setup (regular fee of NT$1,500) and free 3-month Hi-Net on-line surfing of 30 hours each month.

2. Taicom's hi-speed LED model modem for NT$2,999 (retail for NT$8,500) or LCD model for NT$3,999 (retail for NT$11,000).

Subscription for the ISDN service is available from November 1 at 252 service centers of CH's northern, central and southern branch offices, island-wide T-Zone stores, Tomorrow World stores, KS 3C stores, and NOVA sales floors.