Yes, Shanghai now has the first test network of FTTH. No, it does not stand for Fantastic Television Treats for Home, but in fact for Fiber-to-the-Home. It is used to provide services such as HDTV, VoIP, Broadband Internet and networked computer games. I am not sure what this means in terms of IPTV and how the two will co-exist.

Another government group - The Ministry of Information Industry (MII, pronounced “Mission Impossible 1“) - has projected the amount of FTTH consumers will break 20 million by 2008. They have said that the test network has been set up in a “Residential area” of Shanghai, so that really narrows it down. Well, I can at least tell you it is not in my area.

This whole thing brings to mind the old concept of the Integrated Services Digital Network that tried to accomplish exactly the same thing as FTTH is doing today. Really, it was the same thing, but they seemed to be about 25 years too early. ISDN was first introduced in the early 1980’s, and was not widely accepted until the early 90’s, but never really got off the ground. It seems that having all your services on one line was a ridiculous proposition, mostly due to poor adpotion and high cost.

Nowadays, computers and connections are so inexpensive; it seems about time for something like this to come forward. It’s about time we had phone sex, internet porn and the Playboy channel on the same line!