The FTTH Council Europe has released its latest twice yearly global ranking of countries with significant Fibre to the Home (FTTH) market penetration. It tracks the level of FTTH in economies where more than 1% of households are connected directly into high speed fibre optic broadband networks.

In all, 20 economies met this threshold, up from 14 in July 2008 and 11 in July 2007. Asian economies maintained their leadership, with South Korea (44%), Hong Kong (28%), Japan (27%) and Taiwan (12%) continuing to hold the top four places respectively.

Meanwhile, Japan remains the overall leader in terms of the number of fibre‐connected homes at 13.2 million, followed by the United States (6.05 million) and the People’s Republic of China (5.96 million). Just don't expect to see the UK on this list, we're not even close:


The growth is largely attributed to the entry of several new European countries into the ranking, with total EU fibre optic broadband subscribers fast approaching the two million mark (currently 1.661 million):


Sadly Europe still only represents a small portion of the overall fibre optic broadband subscriber base, although the obvious absence of our own country is clearly very worrying. However BT's £1.5 billion programme to roll out fibre-based, super-fast broadband to as many as 10 million homes by 2012 should help get us on the list eventually.

Mind you FTTH Council Europe are quite picky about which types of fibre optic they choose to include into their statistics, with only true FTTH or FTTB (building) deployments meeting the cut. That's why Virgin Media doesn't really count as most of its infrastructure is different. Similarly much of BT’s deployment is likely to be FTTC (cabinet) based, which won’t count either.