Fiber to the Home (FTTH) may not be the universal last mile access service yet, but according to Idate, fiber-based broadband subscribers increased 54 percent to nearly 67 million worldwide by the middle of 2011.
During the six month period, the amount of buildings and homes that service providers passed with fiber networks increased over 47 percent to almost 179 million.
By taking into consideration other fiber-based technologies, including the telco's hybrid copper/fiber-based VDSL2 and the cable industry's coax/fiber-based fiber to the last amplifier (FTTLA) architectures, and FTTX+LAN, service provider's last mile fiber deployments passed 112.7 million subscribers and 361.7 million homes/businesses at the end of June 2011.
From a country perspective, Japan leads the FTTH/B market, but Idate forecasts China, whose three main service providers--China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom--are aggressively rolling out FTTH/B, will soon surpass it. China Telecom, for one, is moving ahead with building out a FTTH network that can handle 18 million lines with 100 Mbps capabilities in major cities.
Holding onto the number three spot was South Korea, followed by the United States, Russia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Sweden and France.
Overall, Asia-Pacific made up 68.6 percent of all FTTH/B subscribers as of the end of 2011, a figure that will grow to 72.8 percent by 2015.
For more:
- Telecompaper has this article
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