Taiwan to construct island-wide CC box passage for broadband services

Taipei, June 24, 2005 (CENS)--The Construction & Planning Agency under the Ministry of the Interior recently kicked off an NT$30 billion (US$967 million at US$1:NT$31) project to construct a 6,000-kilometer-long communication compact box passage network for broadband services across Taiwan.

The construction is part of the government's NT$500 billion (US$1.6 billion) "Mobile Taiwan" project, which is designed to create an ideal environment for wireless applications in five years beginning this year by constructing various facilities.

The central government on the island will grant ownership of the passages to local governments, which will lease the passages to the island's fixed-line network providers eager to lay optical-fiber cables along main roads throughout the island. Local governments plan to command cable-TV operators to lease the box passages out of concern that their cable lines, often disorderly hung on electrical poles, have become a negative city landscape.

The government estimates the passages to allow the providers to lay optical-fiber cable system as long as 96,000 kilometers as a whole to serve six million subscribers across the island. The government estimates the construction to bring local governments business opportunities valued at least NT$100 billion (US$3.2 billion) a year.

The agency's officials pointed out that currently only the state-run Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. Has last-mile-to-home network and the passage will allow its three privately held competitors to install the network. They added that all of the island's four fixed-line network providers—Chunghwa, Taiwan Fixed Network, New Century InfoComm and Eastern Broadband Telecom—had expressed their interest in renting the passages.

The construction will start from highly urbanized cities like Taipei, Taichung and Kaoshiung.