Analyst Predicts EU Superfast Broadband Coverage to Miss its 2020 Target

A new study has claimed that Europe will fail to make superfast broadband (30Mbps+) ISP speeds available to 100% of households by 2020. But it will achieve 90% coverage and most of that will be due to the mass adoption of hybrid-fibre (e.g. FTTC and cable) technologies that combine fibre optic with existing copper or coax cables.

Europe’s Digital Agenda currently aims to achieve 100% coverage of basic broadband services (0.5-4Mbps) by the end of 2013 and it also wants superfast speeds to be made available to 100% of EU homes by 2020 (with 50% able to access 100Mbps+). As it stands the current level of EU superfast coverage is about 54% (details).

But new research from UK telecoms analyst Point Topic claims that the EU will fall short of their headline ambition but should still achieve 90% coverage of superfast connectivity. It also finds that copper-based broadband technology (FTTC/VDSL) will continue to dominate because it’s cheaper to deploy than a full fibre optic (FTTH/P) network and “fully capable of meeting the 30Mbps target“.

The report states that existing EU FTTC/VDSL solutions typically deliver speeds that range from 25Mbps to 40Mbps (note: BT’s own solution in the UK peaks at up to 80Mbps) but they expect this to double in 2014 when Vectoring technology starts to be deployed (latest update on the UK trial), which cuts out a lot of interference and can thus improve speeds.

More to the point Hybrid Fibre services are growing at the fastest rate. Apparently the number of homes which can subscribe to FTTC has increased by 5.6% to reach 24.9% by the end of 2012 and coverage of cable (DOCSIS 3 etc.) grew by 2.7%; although it’s still ahead of FTTC for now with 39.3% coverage of homes (note: in the UK FTTC has just overtaken cables reach). By comparison FTTH/P grew by 2.4% and covers just 12.3% of the EU.

Point Topics Report said:

The reason why Docsis 3 and FTTP grew more slowly than VDSL, and are expected to continue doing so in future, is mainly economic. Docsis 3 spread very rapidly in the period 2010 to 2012 because it required just a simple upgrade to existing cable TV networks. But that process is almost complete now and further growth will require building new cable networks which is hard to justify financially.

Similarly, extending the coverage of FTTP will also mean building new networks. Much of the FTTP coverage in Europe to date serves areas of high-density housing, such as apartment blocks in the eastern EU. FTTP can be the cheapest solution in these circumstances, particularly if there is no telephone network. But the most attractive areas are largely covered now, so FTTP growth is also slow.

Based on these scenarios, Point Topic projects that all three technologies will continue growing in coverage, but VDSL will grow much faster as it spreads across the existing telephone network.

In fairness not all cable networks are equal and Virgin Media has already informed us that the potential adoption of next generation DOCSIS 3.1 technology, which is likely to take place around 2015/16, could be done without needing to completely replace the old network and would still deliver a significant capacity boost (here).

Otherwise Point Topic expects FTTC to reach about 73% of EU homes by 2020, while DOCSIS 3 cable will cover 45% and FTTH/P only 16%. But FTTH/P could rise to 21% or more, depending on various factors like funding, regulation and so forth.

No doubt the advocates of true fibre optic connectivity would be quick to point out that FTTC is still distance dependent and will thus never be as fast as a true FTTH/P solution. Similarly FTTH would be fairly future proof and we might otherwise need to go back and re-invest in order to bring the fibre optic cable even closer to homes (BT will probably solve this through FTTdp and G.Fast).

Meanwhile it’s worth mentioning that the United Kingdom has recently revised its target and now aims for 95% of people to be within reach of a superfast broadband (25-30Mbps+) connection by 2017 (note: it should reach about 88% by the end of 2015) and the vast majority of this will be from cable or FTTC connections.