APAC region stays top of FTTH market penetration rankings

July 23, 2008 - The Asia-Pacific region remains top of new rankings released by the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Councils of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, with the US and Europe also continuing to experience "robust growth" in fibre connections.

The rankings, updated twice a year, tracks FTTH penetration in economies where over 1% of households are connecting to high speed fibre networks, with 14 countries currently meeting this threshold. South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan now occupy the top four positions in the ranking, while Asia as a region now accounts for over 27mn of the world's estimated 32mn FTTH connections. South Korea has nearly 37% of its households connected to fibre, while Hong Kong is at 27%, Japan is at 24% and Taiwan is at 7.7%. China ranked eleventh in terms of market penetration, but saw the number of fibre connections grow to 7.5mn in the six-month period, which means that China is now second to Japan in numbers of fibre-connected households.

"This is an exciting time for FTTH broadband in Asia," said Shoichi Hanatani, President of the FTTH Council Asia Pacific. "FTTH has overtaken DSL in South Korea and will soon do the same in Japan. Here in the Asia-Pac region, we are witnessing the end of a hundred years of telecom history as copper loops are quickly being replaced by optical fibre access networks."

Four Scandinavian countries (Sweden Norway, Iceland and Denmark) and the Central European country of Slovenia occupied fifth through ninth positions in the rankings, with market penetration ranging from 7.5% to 3.2%. The Netherlands and Italy were in 12th and 13th positions in the rankings, each with a market penetration of 1.4%. In total, European countries reported 1.4mn FTTH connections.

The US came third in terms of total FTTH households at 3.3mn, and is in tenth position in the global rankings with a 2.9% market penetration. The US is also reported to be experiencing the highest rate of growth of any economy in terms of FTTH subscribers, and is doubling the number of connections year over year, largely due to aggressive fibre deployment by Verizon and ongoing FTTH builds by more than 600 smaller providers across the country.