TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 8 -- Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a government-aided R&D organization, has stated that 14 Taiwanese networking manufacturers have created an open consortium. The group hopes to spearhead the universal adoption of fiber optic LANs. The consortium, which produces a quarter of the world's workstation and desktop LAN hardware, hopes to push the networking industry towards fiber-based networking products. The group plans to stimulate market demand by cutting the costs of fiber LANs in half. We are taking this step to ensure that fiber becomes the favored medium for LAN environments. declared Dr. Chintay Shih, President of ITRI. Its virtually unlimited capacity satisfies the ever-increasing need for bandwidth. We intend to bring fiber to the curb, home, desk, and pillow. We expect this action to fundamentally change the networking industry and help create a whole new generation of sophisticated business and entertainment applications that have been previously unavailable because of bandwidth limitations.