GPON deployments drove broadband equipment spending up in 2014, says Infonetics

Service providers' ongoing moves to upgrade existing copper and build out Greenfield fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) services were a key contributor in broadband aggregation revenues, a sector that Infonetics Research said rose 9 percent in 2014 to $8.2 million.

Driven by gains in both China and Latin America, GPON gained revenue share, while DSL spending dropped 15 percent in 2014 from 2013 as continued price erosion for ADSL and VDSL tamped revenue.

"The strength in the broadband aggregation market is due to another record year for GPON equipment, as operators around the world seek a flexible, interoperable technology for offering higher-bandwidth speeds to their customers," said Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research, now part of IHS, in a release. China leads in GPON spending, accounting for half of all GPON sales in 2014, while Latin America notched the largest increase in GPON spending, up 258 percent.

Heynen added that "fierce competition in Brazil combined with key FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) projects in Mexico and Colombia helped expand GPON's reach." 

Although there has been a lot talk about carriers conducting trials of vectoring technology, VDSL port shipments only rose 3 percent in 2014. Heynen attributes the lower shipment rates of VDSL to "longer deployment timelines than traditional, CO based ADSL, and heavy competition pushing providers closer to G.fast or FTTH."

From a vendor perspective, the five fixed broadband equipment revenue market share leaders for 2014 were Adtran, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Calix, Huawei and ZTE.

Overall, the global broadband aggregation equipment market, including DSL, PON and Ethernet FTTH, ended on a strong note, with fourth-quarter 2014 revenue growing 7 percent sequentially, to $2.2 billion.

For more:
- see the release

Related articles:
Moody's: Wireline revenue will continue to decline, but TV, broadband will offset trend
PON deployments drove up broadband access market to $11.5B in 2014, says Dell'Oro
Verizon's FiOS growth continued to cushion the blow of wireline revenue declines in Q4
AT&T battles legacy losses with U-verse gains, but sets focus on profitable customers
Adtran's Q4 revenues dip to $144M on slow broadband, optical sales