• база пользователей сетей FTTx утроится в период с 2008 по 2013 годы

• экономически развитые регионы Азии останутся доминирующими регионами в части внедрения оптоволокна к 2013 году, но Европа (как Восточная, так и Западная), а также Северная Америка начнут сокращать разрыв;

• VDSL обеспечит не более 8.6% от общего числа абонентов FTTx к 2013 году

• Несмотря на рост абонентской базы FTTx, операторы по-прежнему будут сталкиваться с проблемами в запуске и профилировании своих услуг

Более подробный прогноз приведен ниже, на английском:

At the end of 2008, FTTx had firmly established itself as a third viable and scalable global fixed broadband technology alongside DSL and Cable. Despite economic problems, operators will continue to build new networks, and the number of global FTTx subscriptions will almost triple between now and the end of 2013. But operators face some key challenges. While FTTx will experience some growth between now and 2013, many consumers are still unwilling to pay an excess for new FTTx services. In addition, most operators do not know if, how and when they will make a return on their investments.

According to Informa Telecoms & Media’s “FTTx: A Global Analysis” report, there were 49 million global Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), Fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) and Very high speed DSL (VDSL) subscriptions in 2008. This represents 11.6% of all fixed line subscriptions. While such figures may seem impressive for such a new technology, subscriptions are clustered in only a few countries and fiber is still not a reality for consumers in most countries.

The majority of FTTx subscriptions, unsurprisingly, are in Asia Pacific. Pioneering fiber nations Japan and Korea have 13.4 million and 7.0 million FTTx subscriptions respectively. But it is China that has the greatest number of FTTx subscriptions. Chinese operators have been aggressively upgrading their legacy networks to fiber, and there are now 16.6 million FTTx subscriptions in the country.

By 2013, Informa predicts there will be 145 million subscriptions, just under one in five of all global broadband subscriptions. Much of this growth will be fuelled by Europe and North America. With the exception of a few alternative operators, FTTx growth in Western Europe has been sluggish to date. But greater regulatory certainty and wider acceptance of the benefits of fiber mean that by 2013, there will be 21.6 million FTTx subscriptions, representing total household penetration of 10.5%. While the global financial crisis will cause some operators to slow spending down in the short term, Informa does not expect this to significantly alter uptake through to 2013.

Central and Eastern Europe, not currently thought of as an advanced broadband region, will have a FTTx penetration rate comparable to Western Europe by 2013. It will have 10.6 million subscriptions by 2013, representing 13.2% of all subscriptions in the region. Operators in Central and Eastern Europe are taking advantage of a high proportion of multi dwelling units (MDUs) and a lax regulatory regime to quickly roll out FTTB in the region.

North America, too, will see significant growth. As a result of aggressive rollouts from both AT&T and Verizon, there will be 24 million FTTx subscriptions in North America in 2013, making up 22% of the total market. Conversely, some of today’s lead fiber markets will see some slowdown in growth towards the end of the forecast period as they approach saturation. Growth of FTTH and FTTB in Japan, for example, will have a compound annual growth rate for fiber of only 7.9% over the forecast period.

Informa’s findings also suggest that, despite the popularity of VDSL among some cost-conscious European incumbents, it has a limited lifespan. “All operators, even those in Europe that are refusing to countenance FTTH beyond limited trials, know that they will eventually have to move to VDSL”, says Giles Cottle, analyst at Informa. “And globally, most operators will not even countenance VDSL, due to factors including competitor activity and the absence of adequate copper networks”. Informa predicts that VDSL will make up only 8.6 % of all FTTx subscriptions in 2013.

The big concern for most operators is how they will profit from their rollouts. With a few exceptions, most operators with advanced FTTx rollout plans have not made money from their new networks. Some will try and charge more for FTTx but others, including alternative operators Fastweb of Italy, France’s Free and Sweden’s Bredbandsbolaget are charging the same or even less for their premium services as their legacy services.

There are also few value-added services or applications that rely on the extra bandwidth of FTTx. But this should not stop operators from rolling out. “Ultimately, the revenue will come”, says Cottle. “The only service that truly took advantage of the extra bandwidth that DSL provided over dial-up was peer to peer downloading. A whole host of new services were developed once broadband became more prevalent, and the same thing will happen with FTTx.”

The challenge for operators is to avoid the mistake they made with the first generation of broadband by letting others develop services while they provided only connectivity. They must play to their strengths as operators to make sure that, where they are in the position to do so, they are the ones providing services for their subscribers. They should also look to take advantage of some of the other benefits that FTTx will likely bring, such as the potential to increase their wholesale shares and the associated revenue benefits this will bring.

Компания Informa Telecoms and Media предлагает интересующимся платный отчет "FTTx Analysis: A Global Analysis".

Это так называемый "стратегический отчет", представляющий исчерпывающий список планируемых и действующих сетей FTTx по всему миру, их бизнес-модели, технологии, абонентские базы и другие ключевые детали. Кроме того, в отчете проанализировано проникновение и абонентские базы для более, чем 130 стран.

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