The latest update to the FTTH global rankings has been released by the three FTTH Councils of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, and it holds few surprises.
The Asia-Pacific region still leads the global ranking with South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan taking the first four places, followed by the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway. There is just one new entry in the list — Slovakia, a country with about 2.2 million homes (for comparison, the UK has around 25 million homes).
To be included in the FTTH global rankings, countries must have more than 1% of households connected with fibre, whether by fibre-to-the-home (FTTH), which requires a fibre connection to reach the boundary of the home, or fibre-to-the-building (FTTB), where the fibre terminates inside a multi-tenant dwelling, typically in the basement.
At the end of June 2009, 21 economies met this threshold. Indeed, all of the top 10 economies in the global ranking have more than 5% of their households connected with FTTH/B.
The message from the FTTH Councils is that it’s “business as usual” despite the recession. The global rankings may not have changed very much but a significant number of new fibre subscribers were added in the first half of the year.
On average fibre penetration increased 15% in the first six months of 2009, with more than 5.5 million new subscribers worldwide. The greatest number of new subscribers were added in China — nearly 2 million of them — bringing the total to 7.95 million. 1.38 million new FTTH/B connections were made in Japan; 795,000 new subscribers were hooked up in the US.
“Big countries like France, UK and Germany are still missing,” noted Karel Helsen, president of the FTTH Council Europe. “But even there we see further development and I expect France to be the first big European economy in the global ranking by end of this year as it is already very close to the 1 percent.”
In terms of raw subscriber numbers, France holds fourth place in Europe with about 250,000 fibre users at the end of June 2009, behind Sweden (478,900 subscribers) and Italy (about 315,000), according to IDATE, the analyst firm that compiles the figures on behalf of the FTTH Council Europe.
One interesting piece of new information is the metric of subscribers versus homes passed (see table), which shows that the uptake of fibre-based services is much lower in the so-called “major economies” in Europe compared to the Scandinavian leaders. Is this simply an consequence of a highly competitive broadband market, or could it be a lack of awareness of the benefits of fibre among the general public?
One Comment
I think it is lack of awareness! Half the country has what passes for broadband, so they don’t think about it. The other half can’t imagine something they can’t get, and what you have never had you don’t miss. The Politicians don’t get IT at all, their PAs and Secretaries do all the ‘tehchie’ stuff.
The Uk needs fibre to keep up with the rest of the world. When will government wake up?