OREANDA-NEWS. August 26, 2010. TEO LT, AB, the largest provider of integrated telecommunication, IT and TV services in Lithuania, will this year invest about LTL 96 million in deployment of its next-generation fiber-optic network. The Company’s investments will already this year enable the availability of FTTH Internet services to approximately half of the country’s population.
 
The total investments of TEO in the FTTH network, which has been expanded in fifty cities of Lithuania for three years, will at the end of this year amount to about LTL 255 million.
 
According to Giedrius Vegys, Chief Financial Officer of TEO, successful performance of TEO and the telecommunications market starting to show signs of recovery will allow the Company to increase investments in deployment of its next-generation network, and this year the Company will allocate for that purpose 75 per cent more funds than in 2009.
 
This year’s total investments of TEO into the development of the network, information systems and other activity fields will amount to LTL 178 million.
 
By the end of December, the FTTH network, which is installed up to the user’s computer, will be available for use to about half of the country’s population – 570 thousand households. The next-generation network is being developed at the fastest rate in the country’s biggest cities – by the end of 2010 it will be available for use to approximately 88 percent residents of Vilnius, 95 per cent residents of Klaipeda, 75 percent residents of Kaunas, more than half of Panevлюys and Shiauliai residents.
 
At the end of June, the next-generation network services were used by more than 84 thousand customers, and it is forecasted that by the end of this year there will be more than 100 thousand.
 
According to the data released by the FTTH Council Europe at the end of February, Lithuania is the country, which is implementing next-generation fiber-optic Internet technologies at the fastest rate in Europe. Only in South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan FTTH (Fiber to the Home) fiber-optic networks are being developed faster than in Lithuania.
 
The next-generation fiber-optic network is characterised by the potential to transmit data at very high speeds. At present, the speed of the Internet services currently provided by TEO to its customers is 200 Mbps (Megabytes per second). In the future, the Company’s fiber-optic access will enable providing services at the speed of several Gigabytes per second. The FTTH network will provide users with the possibility to enjoy the extremely high quality of different services through a single access point: to make telephone calls, watch digital TV, browse the Internet and send video records simultaneously.