Stuart Corner
Monday, 28 July 2008 08:47
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
The US Government and US carriers are copping flack over future broadband offerings from all side, yet its FTTH deployment rate is the highest in the world.
The FTTH Councils of Europe. North America and Asia have released the latest of their twice yearly reports on FTTH uptake around the world, and it contains some interesting statistics. For example, in terms of the absolute number of services in operation, China, with 7.5 million services is now second only to Japan. However, its ranking by market penetration,11th, is also pretty impressive for such a populous nation.
This puts it only one notch behind the US - 10th by penetration with 2.9 percent - and ahead on absolute numbers. The US has 3.3 mill FTTH households, less than half the number in China. However, according to the FTTH Council, the US "continues to experience the highest rate of growth of any economy, doubling the number of connections year over year. This is due largely to an aggressive FTTH deployment by market leader Verizon and ongoing FTTH build out by more than 600 smaller providers across the country."
You would think that with such comments companies like Google (owner of YouTube) for whom subscriber broadband represents the arteries of its business would be full of praise for Verizon and its ilk. Far from it. Last week Google's VP of engineering and chief Internet evangelist (and renowned Internet elder statesman) Vint Cerf, in an interview with US Information Week, slammed US telcos for not investing in broadband network infrastructure. And he demanded that they support net neutrality. "It's like little kids in a tantrum," [they are saying] 'I'm not going to build this system unless you give me three scoops of ice cream and a pony.'...What I really want is a split in the regulatory framework for broadband Internet service. I want to see the reintroduction of common carriers' responsibilities."
The FTTH Council is similarly not happy with the way broadband is developing in the US, despite its comments about Verizon. And it is looking to the Government to take the lead.
In a submission to the FCC's
draft strategic plan for 2009 -2014 the Council said: "We believe the Commission should be more ambitious in seeking to promote the universal availability of not only broadband services but high-bandwidth, bi-directional broadband services."
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