China in top 10 for fibre to the home

Stuart Corner
Friday, 20 July 2007 10:12

Business IT - Networking

The world's most populous nation is among only handful that can boast broadband services delivered over fibre to more than one percent of households, either all the way to each dwelling, or into a residential building.

According to the first global ranking of fibre-to-the-hone (FTTH) penetration produced by the three FTTH Councils (US, Europe and Asia Pacific) Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan are the world leaders in the percentage of homes that receive broadband communications services over direct fibre optic connections. 21.2 percent of residential buildings in Hong Kong are wired with FTTH, followed by South Korea with 19.6 percent of buildings and Japan 16.3 percent of homes. Scandinavian countries occupy the next three positions, with Sweden having 7.2 percent of its households connected to FTTH, Denmark 2.9 percent and Norway at 2.5 percent.

Taiwan, Italy, People's Republic of China, The Netherlands and the United States round out the top 11 economies, with FTTH penetration rates of between 1.4 and one percent of households, either direct to the individual dwelling or to the residential building. There were only 11 economies with penetration rates in excess of one percent.

The three regional FTTH Councils joined together to create the ranking "to provide the telecommunications industry, governments and regulators with a unique snapshot of international fibre access penetration." They intend to update the ranking annually and to work jointly to refine the research methods in order to provide more in-depth information.

Announcing the release of the global ranking at the FTTH Council Asia-Pacific's Beijing Conference, Shoichi Hanatani, president of the FTTH Council Asia-Pacific said: "For the first time we have a tool to monitor the transition that is now occurring around the world, from legacy copper loops to powerful new optical fibre access networks.

No attempt was made to rank the top nations by speed of access provided to individual households, nor to gather information on the types of services delivered over fibre.

According to a recent presentation to the Australian Telecommunications Users Group from Colin Goodwin, representing the Asia Pacific FTTH Council, in Japan, NTT is conducting the world's largest FTTH build and had over 7.1 million subscribers on fibre in June 2006. In NTT West's region, FTTH overtook ADSL in early 2007 and will overtake ADSL in NTT East's region in early 2008. There is strong support from Government which has set a target of 30 million FTTH subscribers by 2010, Goodwin said.