Tokyo: June 11, 2007 -- Sumitomo Electric Networks Inc. (Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan; President: Tsuyoshi Kawano) has received an order from Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (known as CHT below), Taiwan's largest provider of telecommunications services, for Gigabit Ethernet optical communications equipment for deployment in their first optical broadband service. This order from CHT marks the first step towards a full-scale introduction of FTTH equipment developed in Japan into the Asian region.

Viewed globally, Japan has progressed furthest in the field of optical broadband services, and great interest is being shown in Japanese FTTH technology from around the world.
This time, Sumitomo Electric Networks has received an order from CHT for GE-PON(*1) central office equipment, customer premises equipment, and network management system sufficient for 30,000 FTTH subscribers. GE-PON is technology that allows an optical fiber cable capable of transmission speeds up to 1Gbps to be branched into a maximum of 32 households to allow joint use by multiple households. In June 2004, the technology was globally standardized as IEEE802.3ah(*2), and in Japan it is widely utilized by major providers such as NTT to provide optical broadband services to subscribers. Elsewhere in the Asian region, the technology has begun to be used for business in South Korea, and other countries are proceeding with test introductions and investigations using equipment that matches their country's conditions. In Europe and America, historical precedents in network structures mean that the introduction of other network standards (G-PON(*3)) has begun, but recently investigations have also started into introducing GE-PON to realize inexpensive and easy to handle Ethernet-based networks.

In the global trend towards the spread of optical broadband services and the requirement to respond to the demand for high-speed Internet services, CHT has previously investigated and tested the introduction of optical broadband services. However, as a first step to full introduction this time CHT has decided to introduce the service to approximately 30,000 households throughout Taiwan, and is procuring the required equipment. Sumitomo Electric Networks plans to begin shipping the equipment from July 2007 in cooperation with a Taiwanese SI company, Hitron Technologies Inc.