The group will be established in November by the government-affiliated National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and private companies, the leading business daily Nikkei said.

It will aim to develop and commercialise in around 2015 a network that can transfer data at 10 gigabits per second, 10 times faster than the next-generation network due to be launched in Japan this year, the report said.

The group will be joined by such companies as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., KDDI Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp.

It will spend some 30 billion yen (260 million dollars) on the research project over the next five years, the report said.

Similar projects are already been under way in the United States and Europe.

The optical network would allow as many as 100 billion devices to access it simultaneously and still enjoy extremely fast data-transfer speeds, the report said.

Such features are important in the future when not only personal computers and mobile phones but also surveillance cameras, medical sensors and a range of other electronic devices are also likely to be connected to online networks.

The technology would also offer stable, high-speed wireless access even on moving high-speed trains, the report said.

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