Household FTTH connections to reach 89mn by 2012 worldwide, according to new report

February 11, 2008 – The number of households worldwide with a fibre to the home (FTTH) connection will grow at rates above 30% annually through 2012 and reach 89mn worldwide, according to a new report from research firm Heavy Reading.

FTTH-connected households currently account for 20mn connections globally.  The growth in FTTH deployments is expected to be dominated by Asia, where the number of connected households is forecast to reach nearly 54mn by 2012, followed by EMEA with 18% and the Americas with 17%.

“The transition to FTTH is now well underway in many countries, including Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Taiwan and the US,” said Graham Finnie, Chief Analyst for Heavy Reading and author of the report.  “Over the next five years, we expect most other developed countries to join that list, and fibre will also have a significant impact in relatively less developed telecom markets, including India, Russia and the Middle East.”

Regarding which operators and vendors will lead this transition, Finnie adds: “On the telco side, our five-year scenario points to a market that is increasingly dominated by incumbent telco investment, but there is plenty of room for other types of operators, including utilities, municipalities, CLECs, real-estate developers, and other.  On the vendor side, it is already clear that the winners and losers will not be the same as those that dominated the DSL market, but again the picture is complicated, in particular by a likely upswing in M&A activity as FTTH deployment grows and smaller vendors are snapped up by the majors.”