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Broadband has arrived!
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Liu Fuzhong
TOPWAY Company, a local data service company, has, for the first time, slashed service fees in some residential areas, a sign that Internet access through television cable may soon become mainstream.
"There are currently over 600,000 cable TV subscribers in Shenzhen, providing a large customer base for Topway," marketing director Fang Youxing said.
The company started offering Internet access service back in 1997. Yet according to Fang, the company met great difficulty in mass marketing the service.
"First of all, service fees remained expensive for a long time, thanks to high equipment costs. Second, the original cables allowed only one-way data transmission," he said.
Fang said the Internet access business is still constrained by its reliance on foreign equipment.
Fortunately most large residential complexes have remodeled their cable systems, allowing them to handle two-way transmission.
Cable lines, which allow huge bandwidth, offer much faster Internet access than ordinary telephone lines. Industry experts believe the technology promises big market potential for cable operators as well as content providers. They say large bandwidth makes it possible to offer video and music over the Internet.
Topway officials say that prices in major residential areas has already dropped to 200 yuan (US$23) a month, equivalent to service fees of other access modes.
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