Adc’s Home Internet: Broadband In 3 Months

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ADC’S HOME INTERNET: Broadband in 3 months

Shin Corp unit’s Bt1-bn network nearly complete

BANGKOK: -- Shin Corp subsidiary Advance DataNetwork Communications (ADC) is wrapping up the construction of its Bt1-billion broadband network for home Internet surfers.

With 60 per cent of its network dedicated to Bangkok and 40 per cent for provincial customers, the company plans to start offering broadband Internet access in November, said Aphivan Ratnin Saipradist, ADC’s managing director. The network will be able to handle about 100,000 customers to start with.

The network marks ADC’s effort to establish a foothold in the household broadband market after building up a portfolio of business customers. It aims to become the broadband sector leader within two years.

“We have purchased equipment and are going to start installing it by the end of August. Initially, we expect to install 100,000 ‘ADSL’ ports to support the first 100,000 users in one year,” Aphivan said.

The move is in line with the government’s strategy to get one million Thais plugged into the Internet via broadband. ADC will set up a new sub-brand for the home broadband service, the name of which the company would not reveal.

ADC plans to offer 2-megabit per second service at the same price its competitors charge for connections with speeds of 526 kilobits per second.

Aphivan said the move is a part of Shin Corp’s strategy to develop and provide new IP-based services for entertainment, business, and education applications.

Under its “synergy centre strategy”, companies under Shin Corp – AIS, ADC, CS Loxinfo, ShinSat, Shin Broadband, Shinee, Telewiz, and iTV – will collaborate on new services that would rely on the broadband infrastructure.

The company also owns a Bt300-million ultra-high-speed ring network throughout Bangkok.

The 10-gigabits per second bandwidth service is available to companies in 40 large office buildings in Bangkok, including Sathorn City, Bangkok City, Lake Rachada and Asok Tower among others.

The company plans to expand the service to 10 more buildings by the end of the year.

It also has a new business service called Gigabit MAN, which is geared for companies with multiple offices in the Bangkok area to link their local area networks. It is designed for video conferencing, data recovery and the outsourcing, information and advertising businesses.

“Running at 200 megabits per second, this service is 50-per-cent cheaper than existing services provided by competitors.

“Instead of paying around Bt400,000 for using a 200 Mbps-network, they can pay less than Bt200,000 for the same speed,” said Aphivan.

--The Nation 2004-08-25