Allion and Chunghwa Telecom Team Up to Provide ADSL Based Video on Demand Services in Taiwan's Capital - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, August 9, 1999

Allion announced Monday that it will team up with Chunghwa Telecom to provide Video On Demand services to many of its 8 million customers in Taipei and the surrounding region. The VOD service pilot program will initially deploy later this year with approximately 40 sites around Taipei coming on stream in the year 2000.

Chunghwa Telecom is Taiwan's preeminent supplier of fixed line telecom services covering virtually all of Taiwan's 23 million people and one of Taiwan's largest companies. Thomas Chien, Allion's Chairman, states that, "Chunghwa Telecom decided that they needed to provide innovative services to their fixed line customers in order to compete with cable companies offering new and innovative services. Allion as a strategic partner is able help them achieve that goal by delivering the best VOD technology tailored to their needs."

According to Bertrand Chen, Allion's Vice President R&D, "Allion's FISC technology was selected because it was able to deliver more than twice the channels at a better cost per channel, while taking up 75% less physical space than competitors' solutions."

Allion's VOD system delivers 480 channels of movies via Chunghwa's ADSL lines to consumers' homes. The movies are selected and played via a set-top box attached to the consumer's television and connected to the ADSL system via the standard home telephone connection. Each movie is scheduled on multiple channels to deliver starting times every few minutes. Allion is working with Chunghwa Telecom to deliver a solution for "Pure" VOD, whereby channels are dynamically allocated to as many users as required. A cable modem based solution is being developed for trial next year.

Allion's award winning FISC technology is designed to deliver the highest performance for networked CD/DVD solutions. Since FISC VOD solutions deal with the movies in the original format supplied by the film distribution companies, they make periodic movie maintenance operations simple.

The Taiwan government has recognized Allion for its outstanding efforts and achievements by awarding its highest honor, the "Excellence of Strategic IT Product Development Award" to Allion in 1997 in recognition of the design work surrounding the FISC CD platform.

FISC technology is also available for business, educational, hospital and government users as a networked CD solution providing the high throughput necessary for applications such as CBT, interactive teaching and other applications that require multimedia support.

Allion is an engineering-driven company that delivers highly competitive Intelligent Networking Products,Computer Software and Hardware Compatibility Testing, and Design Verification Services. Founded in 1991, Allion is headquartered in Taipei, with 150 employees and over a dozen offices located worldwide.