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Pushing 'Net speed limits
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April 13, 1998: 11:52 a.m. ET
GTE to offer high-speed, low-cost access through analog phone lines
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - GTE Corp. is expanding its horizons in the high-speed Internet connection market through a new technology that is up to 50 times as fast as that currently provided by consumer modems, the company's Network Services unit said Monday.
GTE said its service will rely on "asymmetric digital subscriber line" (ADSL) technology, which transmits data over the existing copper-wire telephone network
The service will begin with schools and businesses in June and then expand into other markets. Prices for the special data connections will start at $30 a month, not counting standard Internet service charges or the cost of purchasing or leasing the ADSL modems from GTE.
"This is the largest announcement of ADSL deployment to date," John Appel, president of GTE Network Services, said in a statement. "We need to be a major player."
The technology will allow users to take advantage of the higher transfer speeds in connecting to any Internet service, a company spokesman told CNNfn.
The company's Internet services provision unit, GTE Internet, currently has 425,000 subscribers.
GTE (GTE) and other telephone companies face increasing competition in the data transmission market from cable companies like Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX) Road Runner and @Home Corp., which currently use cable modems to bring high-speed data to 200,000 customers. (Time Warner is the parent company of CNNfn.)
Appel estimated that the data transmission business could soar to $400 billion in the next decade from $100 billion in 1995.
GTE will offer the high-speed connections in a choice of basic packages ranging from 256 kilobits per second (kps) - nine times as fast as the average consumer modem's speed of 28.8 kps -- to a connection comparable to the existing T-1 standard.
T-1 direct connections to the Internet currently cost about $1,000 a month for a transfer rate of 1.45 megabits per second (mps). By comparison, GTE will offer a 1.5 mps ADSL connection for $150 a month.
Although ADSL supports connections as fast as 8 mps, GTE says it will not provide any services faster than 1.5 mps at first. 
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