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Global FTTH Fibre Optic Broadband Services Grow and UK Remains MIA

Posted: 06th Oct, 2009 By: MarkJ
fibre optic cableThe FTTH Council, which seeks to accelerate adoption of true next generation fibre optic broadband to the home / business ( FTTH ) services by all stakeholders around the world, has revealed that the number of worldwide subscribers grew by 15% (5.5 million new subscribers) in the first six months of 2009. But you won't see the UK on this list, at least not for quite some time.

The global ranking includes all economies where more than 1% of households have a FTTH/B (Fibre to the Home / Building) connection; this is where the fibre optic cable is taken directing into your home or office for maximum speed (100Mbps+). At the end of June 2009, 21 economies met this threshold. Indeed, all of the top 10 ranked economies have more than 5% of their households connected with FTTH/B.

ftth penetration june 2009

It's no surprise to find that the Asia-Pacific region still leads the global ranking with South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan taking the first four places, followed by the Nordic / European countries of Sweden and Norway. The top three global economies in terms of the total number of new subscribers are China, Japan and the United States. The USA alone managed to add 800,000 new subscribers within the first six months of 2009, thus maintaining its position among the top 10.

Joe Savage, President of the FTTH Council North America, said:

"In North America, fibre to the home continues to grow rapidly, driven by high satisfaction among those who have it, as well as the obvious competitive bandwidth and connectivity advantages. Here in the world's second largest FTTH market, we are seeing fiber to the home really changing the way people live, learn and work - with a growing number of subscribers using their services to work from home and to access innovative applications for remote education and tele-medicine."

The UK is notable by its absence from the rankings, though this is hardly surprising. i3 Group is still developing their rollout in Bournemouth and Dundee, BT only has very minimal plans for FTTH/P deployments and the other operators are too small (Ask4 etc.) to make much of a national dent.

Sadly BT's forthcoming mass market FTTC rollout is not recognised by FTTH councils because FTTC only takes the fibre optic cable to street cabinets. The "last mile" connection into homes is still handled over existing copper cables and thus connection speeds are slower. The cable platform used by Virgin Media works in a similar way and is also excluded.

Karel Helsen, President of the FTTH Council Europe, added:

“With Slovakia as the only new entrant in the Global Ranking we have now 14 European countries in this important benchmark of FTTH/B development. Nevertheless, big countries like France, UK and Germany are still missing and two million subscribers in Europe is still a small number compared to 6 million in North America and more than 30 million in Asia-Pacific. We will therefore continue our efforts to communicate the advantages of FTTH/B to accelerate the deployment of fibre-networks in Europe.”

However it's not all been bad news for the UK, with BT recently stepping up trials of Brownfield FTTP technology (here), which is essentially the same as FTTH. Brownfield sites are those where there is an existing copper based network managing connections, like most UK homes have. Still it remains unclear how many areas are likely to see such deployments in the future.
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