OECD Report Big Improvement in UK Fibre Optic Broadband Growth

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released its latest annual report of fixed and wireless broadband development across its 34 member countries, which saw the United Kingdom jump from 9th to 8th place for fixed line broadband penetration and our annual fibre optic (FTTH/B) growth jump to 172%.

The data, which covers the period to June 2013, reveals that fixed line broadband subscriptions in the OECD area have now reached 332 million and an average population penetration of 26.7% (i.e. broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants). By comparison the UK recorded a penetration score of 34.9% (up from 33.6% in last year’s report).

As usual DSL (ADSL) is still the dominant technology, making up 52.69% of fixed line broadband subscriptions, but the OECD notes that it continues to be gradually replaced by Fibre Optic links (note: they define this as FTTH/B/P or LAN connections), now at 15.75% of subscriptions (7.19% in the UK). Meanwhile cable (30.91%) accounted for most of the remaining subs.

Naturally Japan still dominates the fibre optic landscape, where 68.447% of the population connect via the service, yet the OECD’s growth in related connections is currently said to be sustained thanks to increases in large OECD economies with low penetration levels (e.g. France, Spain, Turkey and even the United Kingdom).

At this stage it’s important to stress that the OECD doesn’t 100% clarify whether or not their definition of Fibre includes hybrid FTTC/VDSL connections, although related references for Germany suggest that VDSL lines actually do come under their DSL category.

Similarly the June 2012 – 2013 period did see a fair bit of FTTH/P/B growth in the UK, mostly thanks to the efforts of Hyperoptic, CityFibre, BTOpenreach and a few smaller ISPs. However it should be noted that Openreach has since taken a step back from its original ambition to make native FTTP available to 2.5 million premises via their £2.5bn commercial deployment (here) and at the last count they were still believed to be hovering around the 100,000 mark (here).

OECD Broadband Stats (June 2013)
http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/oecdbroadbandportal.htm