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CMP Heavy Reading: FTTH Deployments to Grow More Than 40 percent in
2008, New Report Finds
(Wireless News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
The number of households with fiber-optic network connections will grow
by nearly 43 percent worldwide in 2008 and will continue to grow at
rates above 30 percent a year through 2012, when the number of
fiber-connected households will reach nearly 90 million globally,
according to a major new report from CMP's Heavy Reading, the market
research division of Light Reading.
Heavy Reading noted that the FTTH Worldwide Technology Update & Market
Forecast delivers a global view of the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) market,
focusing on key developments in the underlying technology, as well as
vendor positioning in this important emerging market segment.
"The transition to FTTH is now well underway in many countries,
including Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, and
the U.S.," notes Graham Finnie, Chief Analyst with Heavy Reading and
author of the report. "Over the next five years, we expect most other
developed countries to join that list, and fiber will also have a
significant impact in relatively less developed telecom markets,
including India, Russia, and the Middle East."
Although the future clearly points toward fiber replacing copper as the
conduit into customer homes, there is plenty of uncertainty surrounding
which network operators and technology suppliers will lead the
transition, Finnie says. "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
others," he explains. "On the vendor side, it is already clear that the
winners and losers will not necessarily 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."
Key findings of FTTH Worldwide Technology Update & Market Forecast
include:
The total number of fiber-connected homes will grow from about 20
million at the end of 2007 to 89 million at the end of 2012,
representing 5 percent of all households worldwide. This growth will be
dominated by deployment in Asia, where the number of connected
households will grow to almost 54 million by the end of 2012. About 17
million will be connected in the Americas, with the majority in the
U.S., while about 18 million homes will be connected in Europe, the
Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).
Gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology will dominate FTTH
deployments in the U.S., since it is now certain to be used by the
major incumbent telcos as well as by many independent telcos. Active
Ethernet has some limited support in the U.S., but it will remain a
minority technology, taking a declining share of the overall market.
In Europe, initial rollout has been dominated by municipal and utility
builders, most of which are using active Ethernet. Active Ethernet will
continue to take the largest share of the European market for several
more years. While the entry of incumbent telcos will gradually shift
the market toward GPON, just as it has in the U.S., active Ethernet
will remain important throughout the forecast period.
As bandwidth demands will continue to increase relentlessly, PON
supporters and builders need to develop a next-generation PON based on
10- Gbit/s Ethernet or WDM within the next five years. In the absence
of successful development, the market could drift toward active optical
networking approaches. However, the signs indicate that next-generation
PONs will be available commercially from around 2011, extending PON
deployment well out into the second decade of the century. Wavelength
division multiplexing (WDM) PONs look like the most probable winner in
this transition.
((Comments on this story may be sent to newsdesk@closeupmedia.com))
((Distributed on behalf of 10Meters via M2 Communications Ltd -
http://www.m2.com))
((10Meters - http://www.10meters.com))
Copyright ? 2008 Wireless News
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