Ma brought up the idea while attending a news conference at the Taipei World Trade Center to mark the inauguration of WiMAX commercial operations earlier this week.
Ten years ago, Ma recalled, during his tenure as mayor of Taipei, he took the lead in offering free e-mail addresses to 250,000 city residents as part of his efforts to promote e-government. At the time, neither hotmail nor yahoo had done so.
Moreover, Ma said, the city government under his leadership began a Wifly project that covers the whole city acreage of 130 square kilometers and enables all of its 2.3 million residents easy access to the Internet service.
However, Wifly signals are unreceivable on vehicles traveling faster than 30 kilometers per hour. The inauguration of WiMax commercial operations will offer much better wireless Internet connections, Ma said.
"I'm hopeful that the WiMAX technology can be introduced into ambulance service systems to enable firefighters and nurses aboard ambulances to connect with medical doctors at major hospitals around the city through WiMax, " Ma said.
"Once such mobile broadband wireless access network becomes available on ambulances, our emergency medical operations will be far more efficient." Before attending the news conference, Ma took a ride on the Taipei mass rapid transit (MRT) system's Muzha line to try out swift access to the Internet on a laptop with built-in WiMAX modules.
WiMAX services became available on eight trains of the Taipei MRT's Muzha line earlier this month to allow passengers to try out the world's first mobile broadband wireless access network.
"The experience was amazing and thrilling," Ma said, adding that he felt gratified to be able to get quick and easy access to the Internet abaord an MRT train. On the train ride, Ma received e-mails on a laptop.
Noting that the government has invested NT$37 billion in an ambitious project aimed at building Taiwan into a country that features mobility and digitization, Ma said WiMAX service will play a key role in accomplishing this lofty goal.
"With the launch of WiMAX service on the MRT system, I'm convinced that wireless broadband communications services will be even widely used when easy access to the Internet on all moblie vehicles are available," he added.
WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) , a big broadband wireless application, processes data at a speed three to four times faster than ADSL, allowing users to download a 2G film in only 20-30 seconds.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): (Sofia Wu)
Quelle/Source: eTaiwan News, 06.06.2009
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