Fiber to the Home, FTTH | Fiber to the home broadband keeps on expanding in Asia

Fiber to the home broadband keeps on expanding in Asia

Broadband technologies as fiber to the home have experiences tremendous growth the last years. In anticipation of future growth and bandwidth capacity requirements operators like NTT in Japan have invested large amounts in their networks. Growth in the Asean countries varies quite a lot by country. For instance Hong Kong has been an early adaptor of FTTH and the penetration grade is high, well over 20% at the moment.  Countries with low penetration grades are for instance China and India, though China is gearing up and investing a lot in fiber networks.  Besides Hong Kong also Japan, South Korea and Taiwan occupy the top positions in fiber to the home deployment.  It might be surprising for some of you that Asia is leading in FTTH, and both Europe and the US are following.  The US is catching up though and large investments by Verizon and AT&T have increased the penetration in the US as well. In Europe the Scandinavian countries are leading, while Germany and France are investing more in FTTH networks. Ranking lists are made up by the Fiber to the Home council.  This council is organized in European, American, Apac and Latin American sections. Overall estimates are that almost 70 million homes are passed by fiber infrastructure, meaning the people who live in those homes could subscribe to services like high speed internet, HDTV etc.  Around 25 million households are actually subscribed to those services at the moment in Asia. So far in Asia Video has been the main driver for growth for FTTH networks. There is a growing demand for HDTV (high definition TV) as well as other high speed services as gaming and real-time internet services.

Anybody involved in fiber is excited about the current state of the industry. Despite the economic downturn caused by the financial crisis, still major investments are made in fiber deployment. This indicates the strenght of the industry, its major players with their long term strategy, as well as high expectations of economic return.  Long term visions are needed, as high deployment costs have been one of the main factors of the -relative- slow growth of fiber to the home networks.

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Tagged With broadband, Fiber to the home, fiber to the home council, FTTH, ftth in Asia, ftth Japan, ftth videa, ftth video, japan, south korea, verizon

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