|
Chunghwa taps Redback
BROADBAND BUILD OUT:
The state-owned telephone company has turned to a US company in its effort to bring speedy Internet access to the Web-connected masses
By Cybil Chou
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Mar 07, 2000, Page 18
Chunghwa Telecom (¤¤µØ¹q«H) plans to use networking equipment manufactured by US-based Redback Network Inc, officials at Redback said yesterday.
The move is a part of Chunghwa's overall effort to provide broadband Internet access to its millions of telephone customers.
Redback's deal, which is its first in Taiwan, will allow Chunghwa to manage thousands of broadband subscribers seamlessly without having to rebuild its existing network infrastructure.
At the same time, Chunghwa's customers will get access to broadband Internet services at prices that are competitive with traditional dial-up access, the company said.
"Chunghwa's goal is to rapidly provision hundreds of thousands subscribers in the next 12 months," Steve Young, vice president of Asia-Pacific operations at Redback, said.
"The addition of scalable, interoperable backbone architecture will enable the company to rapidly deploy and expand their networks to meet the high demand for broadband services," he added.
Randall Kruep, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Redback, said demand in Asia for broadband Internet access is poised to skyrocket as consumers demand faster Web services.
Chunghwa, the nation's state-owned telecommunications service provider, is currently the only carrier in Taiwan providing fixed-line telecom service. The nation's telecommunication market is scheduled to be deregulated this year.
Chunghwa currently has more than 450,000 customers of its dial-up Internet service. The phone carrier has plans to make available more than three million digital subscriber lines throughout Taiwan by 2002.
"Chunghwa has spent billions of dollars in telecommunications infrastructure creating one of the world's most sophisticated networks in the region," one Chunghwa official said.
"We chose the Redback [system] because it enables rapid city-to-city deployments and greatly reduces our provisioning time per subscriber," he added.
In response to whether any other deals with other Taiwanese Internet access providers were in the works, Young declined to comment.
Instead, Young offered this generality: "We are looking at all possibilities of cooperation with Taiwanese corporations in this field."
California-based Redback is a provider of advanced networking solutions that enable telecom carriers, cable multiple system operators and service providers to rapidly deploy broadband access to the Internet and corporate networks.
This story has been viewed 3306 times.
|
Print
Mail
wiki links