China Telecom will invest 6 billion yuan ($878.2 million) in Shanghai in the next two years on a 100Mbps metro optical network.
By 2012 it aims to be able to deliver bandwidth of 100Mbps to each subscriber, 1Gbps to each building and Terabit-level outgoing capacity, Shanghai Telecom said in a press release.
The telco expects to have 750,000 fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers by the end of the year and 3 million by the end of 2011.
Shanghai Telecom\'s fiber network rollout will trigger the production of chipsets, network equipment and terminal devices with an estimated value of RMB 25 billion ($3.7 billion) to RMB 30 billion ($4.4 billion), the company said in a statement.
Shanghai Telecom\'s current network equipment vendors include Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei and ZTE.
China Telecom is an investor in the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) and Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) cable systems and will be able to provide 4Tbps of outgoing bandwidth from Shanghai by the end of next year.
Shanghai Telecom has 9 million fixed-line telephone subscribers and 3.6 million broadband subscribers.