Alcatel-Lucent partners with Chunghwa Telecom for ‘world’s first’ commercial G.fast deployment

Telecoms infrastructure giant Alcatel-Lucent has announced the deployment of what it claims is the world’s first commercial deployment of G.fast broadband technology in Taiwan.

The launch was accomplished in partnership with Taiwan’s largest telco, Chunghwa Telecom, and forms part of its nationwide roll-out of fibre-to-the-premises, which includes advanced copper technologies such as G.fast.

“As innovators in ultra-broadband fixed access, Alcatel-Lucent was the first company to bring G.fast to the market,” said Ken Wu, President of Alcatel-Lucent Taiwan. For the past year we have been working with leading operators around the world to trial the technology.

“This year, the Taiwanese market has already rapidly introduced the latest technology and launched commercial services ahead of other markets to enable the consumers in Taiwan to experience CHT’s G.Fast ultra-high-speed broadband service. Today we are happy to see Chunghwa Telecom take a pioneering role and become the world’s first operator to deploy it commercially.”

“We have made great strides in proactively improving our broadband network service in recent years, and we are pleased to become the first G.fast commercial broadband service provider in the world,” said Mu-Piao Shih, President of Chunghwa Telecom.

“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.”

G.fast has been on the radar for a while, so it’s significant that we’re finally starting to see commercial deployments. For all the talk of FTTH/FTTx, it will remain a logistical and economic challenge to make fibre ubiquitous and G.fast is an increasingly viable alternative.

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