FTTH Deployment: When and why?

Abstract

Presentation

For several years now, broadband has been enjoying increasingly widespread success the world over, with the number of subscribers on the planet totalling more than 200 million at the end of 2005. The growing ubiquity of broadband access solutions has also meant a host of innovations on the services side of things, along with ever-increasing demand for higher bitrates. In their bid to continue to deliver more and more powerful solutions, operators and service providers are already looking to future needs, and becoming involved in deploying VHS (very high-speed) infrastructures.

Asia stands out as a pioneer here, with already operational FTTx networks in both South Korea and Japan. Over in the US, cable's dominance of the access market, the need to build a more competitive offer has been driving the RBOCs to invest in fibre optics. Meanwhile in Europe, the situation differs from country to country, with incumbent and alternative telcos taking a variety of approaches to VHS. Each market's structure, and particularly operators' status, the degree of facilitiesbased competition and the way that the population is spread out between urban and rural zones are among the chief factors that can either spur or impede the development of very high-speed networks.

2005 in fact proved a turning point in terms of the players' approach to VHS, although a host of uncertainties over the rate and scope of deployments remains, particularly in Europe.

This IDATE market report provides an inventory of the state of FTTx deployments around the globe: the players involved, the architecture utilised, coverage targets, services offered and subscriber bases. It also explores the technological progress made in VHS and examines FTTx's positioning with respect to other technologies which are theoretically capable of offering very high bitrates (WiMAX, VDSL2, cable modem, PLC...). And, finally, after having identified those factors which are key to VHS development, the report delivers deployment scenarios for each of the world's major geographic zones, in terms of both growth prospects and VHS household penetration.