An optical receiving circuit 1 is composed of a preamplifier circuit 2, an output differential amplifier 3 and a mean value holding circuit 4. The optical receiving circuit 1 is connected to a photodetector 5 for receiving an input optical signal and outputting current. For the preamplifier circuit 2, a transimpedance type circuit may also be used. The preamplifier circuit 2 comprises a feedback resistor 21 and a resistor for detecting output voltage 22, the transimpedance gain is 55 dB &OHgr; and 3 dB bandwidth when the photodetector 5 the capacity of which is 0.2 pF is connected to its output is 8 GHz. The output differential amplifier 3 discriminates and regenerates data by regulating reference voltage Vref between the high level and the low level of the amplitude of an input signal. The mean value holding circuit 4 includes a sample-hold circuit 41 and capacity 42 for holding the mean value of voltage output from the preamplifier circuit 2. As a CR time constant based upon the capacity 42 and the resistor for detection 22 is 1 ns., the mean value level of a received signal can be detected in approximately one byte of the data of 10 Gb/s. The sample-hold circuit 41 samples the detected mean value level according to a sampling pulse from an external device and holds it. The output of the sample-hold circuit 41 is used for the reference voltage of the differential amplifier 3.