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Chunghwa to introduce fast fiber-optic network

Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) plans to bring more bandwidth to customers beginning next month with high-speed "fiber-to-the-business" (FTTB) and "fiber-to-the-home" (FTTH) Internet services, the company announced yesterday.

To date, telephone calls, faxes and Internet service, including ADSL, have depended primarily on copper wires to deliver data. The fiber-optic service would be capable of connection speeds much higher than those provided by ADSL.

"We will be offering services of 10 megabits, 20 megabits and 100 megabits by mid-July. The cost of the service will be lower than both Japan's 100-megabit service and Korea's 13-megabit service," Chunghwa Telecom Chairman Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) said in a statement.

According to information the company provided, network access for a 100 megabit FTTH service is available for the equivalent of NT$2,370 a month in Japan. In Korea, a 13 megabit service currently costs the equivalent of NT$1,796 per month.

"Our network-access fees will be around NT$1,796 for the 10-megabit service, NT$2,000 for the 20-megabit service, and just over NT$2,300 for 100-megabit service," Hochen told CNA yesterday.

The company plans to gradually replace the widely-used asymmetrical digital signal lines (ADSL) with the fiber-optic-based FTTB/H Internet service.

By the time the company hits its goal of 2.4 million subscribers, a total of NT$50 billion will have been invested in establishing the FTTB/H service, he added.

Japan began promoting the FTTH service last year and currently has 1 million subscribers, according to Liu Pan-ho (劉伴和), a senior director at the telecoms company's marketing department.

"In the past, Chunghwa Tele-com offered a limited FTTB service primarily to schools. We will now focus the service on individual users," Liu said.

Liu said that the company could not guarantee Internet connection speeds of 100 megabit at all times, as each optic fiber would serve more than one household.

"The fiber-optics would connect to the neighborhood node, which might be shared by about 40 people. Most of the time, though, not all 40 users will be using the available 100-megabit bandwidth," Liu said.
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