Increasing fiber-optic broadband coverage and adoption are driving fiber-optic broadband device shipment growth, according to a new study from ABI Research. ABI reports that fiber-optic customer premises equipment represents 26 percent of total shipments in 2013, which translates into 146 million devices.
As such, the group projects shipments of nearly 155 million in 2019. ZTE retained its No. 1 spot as overall broadband CPE market leader, followed by Arris and Huawei. Huawei and ZTE also are the top fiber CPE vendors, with combined shipments totaling some 75 percent of fiber-optic CPE sales last year.
Internationally, ABI Vice President and Practice Director Jake Saunders said that subscribers finally are beginning to transition away from DSL-based broadband toward more fiber offerings, with carriers choosing to upgrade to such advanced technologies as VDSL2 vectoring.
On the cable broadband side of the business, ABI found CPE shipments grew some 2 percent last year, to 55 million units. This number is expected to grow as more cable operators push DOCSIS 3.0 deployments.
"Nearly two-thirds of cable CPE shipped in 2013 were DOCSIS 3.0 standard devices," said ABI industry analyst Khin Sandi Lynn, adding, "DOCSIS 3.0 CPE will account for over 84 percent of cable broadband CPE shipments in 2014."
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