Alcatel-Lucent and Taiwanese telecoms operator Chunghwa Telecom announced a plan to launch the world’s first commercial deployment of G.fast ultra-broadband access technology, allowing the acceleration of ‘last mile’ connectivity to deliver ultra-fast fiber broadband in households across Taiwan.
Chunghwa Telecom is conducting a nationwide roll-out of fiber-to-the-premises infrastructure to residential and business customers using a combination of fiber and copper technology. To accelerate these deployments, Chunghwa Telecom will deploy Alcatel-Lucent’s GPON and G.fast technologies.
Alcatel-Lucent has already trialed the G.fast technology with more than 30 operators worldwide. G.fast, in particular, allows service providers to provide ultra-broadband access to locations where fiber deployment is difficult, using the final length of copper infrastructure extending into premises to deliver ultra-high speeds. Additionally, G.fast eliminates the need to rewire entire buildings and homes.
The combination of fiber and G.fast will enable the Taiwanese telco to provide fast broadband to tens of thousands of homes in Taiwan within two years, and also meet the country’s National Communications Commission plan to improve fixed broadband access in hard-to-reach residential locations. Chunghwa Telecom will launch ultra-broadband services using G.fast to 8.4 million Taiwanese homes in the fourth quarter of 2015.
“With Alcatel-Lucent’s G.fast technology we will be well equipped to launch a ultra high-speed network service toward the end of this year and offer our customers the highest broadband service experience, thereby solidifying our leadership in the fiber optics broadband service market ranging from 100Mbps to 1Gbps,” Chunghwa Telecom’s President Mu-Piao Shih said.