Consultancy firm IDATE reports that the total number of global superfast Fibre-to-the-Home ( FTTH ) broadband ISP subscribers reached 61 million at the end of 2010 (up from 41m in 2009) and will skyrocket to 227 million by 2015.

IDATE expects that this will result in a substantial rise in the number of homes passed for FTTx over the next five years. It's predicted that, by the end of 2015, close to 493 million homes will be able to receive the service worldwide; more than half will be located in Asia and 15% in Western Europe.

FTTH technology, which is almost identical to the Fibre-to-the-Premises ( FTTP ) solution being rolled out to 2.5 million buildings in the UK by BT Group, takes a high capacity fibre optic cable directly to your home or business and can deliver internet speeds of up to 1Gbps (around 1000Mbps).