Cloudy Thinking

Peter Macaulay writes: “Announced today, July 24, 2008 at FTTH (Fiber to the Home) Council Asia-Pacific Conference showing economies where more than one percent of households are connected directly into high speed fiber networks. In all, 14 economies met this threshold.

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 fiber to the home connections. South Korea now has nearly 37 percent of its households connected to fiber,
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.

“This is an exciting time for FTTH broadband in Asia. FTTH has overtaken DSL in South Korea and will soon do the same in Japan,” said Shoichi Hanatani, President of the FTTH Council Asia Pacific. “Here in the Asia-Pac region, we are witnessing the end of a hundred years of telecom history as copper loops are quickly being replaced by optical fiber access networks.”

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.

Source: FTTH Council Europe

And from FTTH Council in Washington, DC:

For completeness and accuracy, the ranking includes both FTTH and FTTB (fiber-to-the-building) figures, while copper-based broadband access technologies (DSL, FTT-Curb, FTT-Node) are not ncluded.

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.

“Clearly, North America, and particularly the United States, has crossed the chasm and is now moving decisively toward fiber to the home as the broadband platform of choice,” said Joe Savage, President of the FTTH Council North America. “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 fueling further deployments.”

Summary:

World wide FTTH = 32 million subs
Top four countries below represent 27 million subs

1. South Korea = 37%
2. Hong Kong = 27%
3. Japan = 24%
4. Taiwan = 7.7%
5. Sweden = 7.5%
6. Norway
7. Iceland
8. Denmark
9. Slovenia = 3.2%
10. USA = 2.9% = 3.3M subs (Highest growth!)
11. China = 7.5M subs
12. Netherlands = 1.4%
13. Italy = 1.4%
14. Singapore

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