BPN 1175 FTTH taking off

Last night a smart helpdesk lady of UPC seduced me into a subscription to a faster connection up to 10Mbps and a digital television subscription (yes I was charmed out of my pants). This morning the speed was already up to 9766 Kbps downloading and 1450 Kbps uploading. A comfortable speed. So far, I always said that I would wait to October 2009, when our apartment in Almere is up for a fibre to the home connection (FTTH). KPN is already selling three bundles of three speeds: 30, 50 and 60 Mbps for downloading at respectively 65, 80 and 110 euro a month, including telephone, internet and television. So I guess by 2010 stats of the Netherlands will be quite different in the ranking of semi-annual continent survey of the FTTH Council. In the latest survey it takes the 12th ranking.

With continued regional growth in fibre to the home (FTTH) market penetration, Asia consolidated its position as the global leader in the march toward next-generation broadband while the United States and Europe also continued to experience robust growth in FTTH, according to an updated global ranking issued today by the FTTH Councils of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America.The ranking, updated twice a year, tracks the level of FTTH market penetration in economies where more than one percent of households are connected directly into high speed fibre networks. In all, 14 economies met this threshold.In Asia, FTTH has overtaken DSL in South Korea and will soon do the same in Japan. The Asia-Pac region is witnessing the end of a hundred years of telecom history as copper loops are quickly being replaced by optical fibre access networks. South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan now occupy the top four positions in the ranking, and the Asian region now accounts for more than 27 million of the world's estimated 32 million FTTH connections. South Korea now has nearly 37 percent of its households connected to fibre, with Hong Kong at 27 percent, Japan at 24 percent and Taiwan at 7.7 percent. And while the People's Republic of China ranked 11th in terms of market penetration, growth in the number of connections to 7.5 million means that China is now second only to Japan in the number of households with FTTH.

In Europe, large FTTH projects are now underway in France and Germany, as well as deployments in other EU countries such as Greece and Portugal. The fact that seven European countries made the global ranking, and that several rank among the top FTTH countries in the world, is a clear indication that Europe is moving forward with the adoption of next-generation broadband. However, this positive picture does not yet represent the entire continent. For this reason the FTTH Council Europe will continue to educate investors and other stakeholders and to promote accelerated deployment of FTTH networks in all European countries. Four Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark) and Slovenia occupied the fifth through ninth positions in the ranking, with market penetration ranging from 7.5 percent to 3.2 percent. The Netherlands and Italy were in the 12th and 13th positions, each with market penetration of 1.4 percent. In all, European countries reported 1.4 million FTTH connections.

North America, and particularly the United States, has crossed the chasm and is now moving decisively toward fibre to the home as the broadband platform of choice. Aggressive FTTH deployment in the U.S. has created a lot of buzz about this exciting technology, and the word of mouth from early FTTH subscribers is driving growth and fuelling further deployments. The United States is third among the world's economies in the total number of FTTH households at 3.3 million, and is in 10th position in the global ranking with 2.9 percent market penetration. The U.S. continues to experience the highest rate of growth of any economy in terms of FTTH subscribers - doubling the number of connections year over year. This is due largely to an aggressive FTTH deployment by market leader Verizon, Inc. and ongoing FTTH build out by more than 600 smaller providers across the country.

Blog Posting Number: 1175

Tags: broadband, FTTH