GigaOM » FTTP

Global broadband subscribers inches up to 600 million

Om Malik — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:13:27 +0000

Here are some highlights:

A total of 17.4 million broadband lines were added during Q3 2011.
China had 152.52 million subscribers at the end of Q3 2011 while the U.S. had 90.5 million.
At the end of Q3 there were a total of 54.4 million IPTV subscribers, up 6.06 percent over the previous quarter. France, China and USA are the top three IPTV regions. Russia is the fastest growing IPTV nation.
FTTx (including FTTH) technologies saw a sharp uptick during the quarter. FTTx alone added 19 million lines during the quarter. Broadband Forum says that now fiber technologies account for 16 percent of total broadband market share and will soon catch up to cable, which stands at 19.5 percent.

It would be interesting to see how the emergence of LTE — probably as a major market force by the end of 2012 — starts to impact the demand for wired broadband connections, especially in newer market with little or no legacy infrastructure.

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The Dutch love their fiber (broadband)

Om Malik — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:27:01 +0000

The Netherlands, a country that wants to have 1 Gbps connections everywhere now has 269,000 fiber-based broadband subscribers. It’s pretty cool to see fiber grow so fast in a country which has been pushing the edge when it comes to broadband. The country has a total of 6.29 million broadband subscribers including 2.66 million who use cable broadband.

According to Akamai’s State of the Internet report, the boom in fiber helped the average connection speed register a 25 percent year-over-year gain during first quarter of 2011 to 7.5 Mbps. Peak speeds during the Q1 2011 were 22 Mbps, Akamai data shows. Like South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Sweden, I like to keep an eye on what the Dutch are doing when it comes to broadband. via Telegeography

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DSL Trembles (a Tad) As Fiber Rumbles

Om Malik — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:45:57 +0000

Fiber Broadband is finally coming into its own, thanks to the growing number of fiber broadband deployments across the world. However, fiber broadband’s growing popularity is coming at the cost of DSL, one of the more widely deployed broadband technologies.

According to Infonetics Research, the worldwide Passive Optical Networking (PON) market jumped 20 percent in the first quarter of 2011 over the fourth quarter of the previous year, and is now over $1 billion, an all time high. PON is a technology used to deliver fiber broadband to our homes.
China, Korea and Japan are the reason why Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON), spending jumped a whopping 46 percent in the first quarter of the year over the previous quarter as Infonetics data shows. EPON is one of most widely deployed fiber broadband technologies with over 40 million subscribers using it as a basis to get super fast broadband.
During the first three months of 2011, Verizon added 207,000 FiOS fiber-to-the-home subscribers. Verizon is one of the largest fiber broadband providers in the US.
A double-digit sequential drop in DSL infrastructure spending in all regions led the overall market’s decline led by China shifting its broadband spending to fiber. China, according to Point Topic is the largest broadband country followed by the U.S.

Just to be clear, DSL isn’t going away anytime soon. At the end of 2010, there were 331 million broadband subscribers that used DSL-based connections versus 72 million who used fiber-based broadband connections. So fiber has a lot of catching up to do!

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State of the Internet: Fiber, Fast Cities and Faster Broadband

Om Malik — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 04:37:10 +0000

The last three months of 2010 were good for broadband, thanks to growing demand for high-speed connections and growing popularity of fiber-based networks in Asia and Europe, according to the State of the Internet Report put together by Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai Technologies. According to Akamai data, the global broadband adoption at the end of 2010 was about 61 percent with nine of the top 10 countries having ended 2010 with broadband adoption levels of 90 percent or higher. Given that Akamai has a fairly large and global footprint, the Akamai data is a good proxy for overall trends.

Here are some salient stats from the report:

In South Korea, the average measured connection speed was 13.7 Mbps, up 11 percent compared to fourth quarter 2009.
Asia continued to dominate the top 100 fastest cities list in the fourth quarter of 2010, accounting for almost nine-tenths of the list: 60 cities in Japan, 16 cities in South Korea, and Hong Kong. Europe accounted for a dozen cities across eight countries. Of the remaining 11 cities, three were in Canada and eight in the United States.
South Korean cities Taegu and Taejon are the top two fastest cities, with average connection speeds of 18.4 and 17.2 Mbps, respectively.
South Korea and Japan, thanks to fiber broadband penetration, dominated the fastest 100 cities list.
Worldwide, 29 cities had average connection speeds in excess of 10 Mbps. Of these, 15 were in South Korea and 14 were in Japan.
The fastest city in Europe was Constanta, Romania, at 8.2 Mbps.
At 7.8 Mbps, Victoria, British Columbia was the city with the highest average connection speed in North America.
The global average peak connection speed grew to 8.8 Mbps, up over 30 percent year-over-year. Using the average peak metric — average of the maximum measured connection speeds across all of the unique IP addresses — Hong Kong is the fastest city, with an average of 37.9 Mbps.
On a year-over-year basis, global high broadband adoption grew 2.6 percent, ending the year at 23 percent. Anything higher than 5 Mbps is classified by Akamai as “high” broadband
In Japan, 58 percent of broadband connections are faster than 5 Mbps, while 36 percent of U.S. connections are faster than 5 Mbps.

Now let’s break down the key U.S. metrics:

In the U.S., three of every four connections to Akamai are at speeds above 2 Mbps.
In the U.S., during the fourth quarter of 2010, the average measured connection speed was 5.1 Mbps, up about 9.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009.
The overall average connection speed for the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2010 was 5.1 Mbps.
The U.S. had an average peak connection speed of 20.3 Mbps during the fourth quarter of 2010.
Delaware is the fastest state in the union with an average speed of 7.2 Mbps. The average peak connection speed metric is the speed end users’ Internet connections are capable of.
Delaware led the U.S. for broadband adoption in the fourth quarter 2010, with 97 percet of connections to Akamai at speeds above 2 Mbps.
The growing popularity of fiber-based networks and availability of higher speed cable connections meant three east coast cities — Staten Island, Jersey City and Boston Metro — became members of the top 10 U.S. broadband cities club.
In the fourth quarter 2010, four U.S. states had more than half their connections to Akamai at speeds above 5 Mbps.

The growing popularity of smartphones, tablets and other mobile connected devices has resulted in an explosion in the mobile broadband usage:

Of the 105 mobile network providers tracked by Akamai, 66 had average connection speeds above 1 Mbps in the fourth quarter 2010.
48 wireless providers had average connection speeds in excess of 1 Mbps, while 18 providers had average connection speeds in the “broadband” (>2 Mbps) range.
Consumption grew quarter-over-quarter at 62 of the listed providers. For the fourth quarter of 2010, users of seven mobile providers consumed, on average, more than one gigabyte (1 GB) of content from Akamai per month.

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Chattanooga Goes Choo-Choo with 1 Gbps Broadband

Om Malik — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:15:43 +0000

Just when I was feeling all dandy about my 100 Mbps fiber broadband connection, there comes news this morning that folks in Chattanooga, Tenn., will soon get 1 Gbps (symmetrical) broadband from their municipally-owned network operator, EPB Fiber Optics. Municipally-owned fiber networks are being viewed as the future of broadband in the U.S. (Related post: Where else in the world can you get 1 Gbps to the Home?)

This is the only 1 Gbps service in the U.S. (take that FiOS!) and is currently offered to 100,000 homes. It uses gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology, much of it provided by Alcatel-Lucent. EPB, which is also the local electric provider, says that all homes and businesses (about 170,000 in total) within its 600-square mile, nine-county region will have access to this network. In June 2010, EPB started offering 150 Mbps symmetrical broadband service to its customers. It’s not clear how much EPB is going to charge for this service; the 100 Mbps connection in Chattanooga currently costs $175 a month. Update: EPB says that their 100 Mbps service is now costing $140 a month and the 1 Gbps service will cost $350 a month.

With this service, EPB has beaten Google to the punch. The search giant has been on-track to building an experimental broadband network that has speeds of 1 Gbps. Even South Koreans, who are used to the fastest broadband in the world, aren’t going to get 1 Gbps by 2012. (Related post: What you can do with 1 Gigabit?)

The fiber broadband network is also a crucial part of Chattanooga’s plans for smart grid technologies. Katie explains how EPB plans to do so. The Smart Grid plans helped the company get about $111.5 million in stimulus funds, which can only help with the network buildout.

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When It Comes to Pain at the Pipe, Upstream Is the New Downstream

By The Numbers: Our Very Connected, Always-On World

GigaOM — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:00:49 +0000

Our world is getting smaller and smaller, thanks to the increasing number of folks connecting to the Internet. Our world is getting faster, thanks to us being connected everywhere. Our world is getting more connected and that in itself is changing the way we live, work, communicate and share. Here is a visual representation of our connected planet, by the numbers.

Infographic by Column Five Media

How Much Will Google's Fiber Network Cost?

Om Malik — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:00:29 +0000

Google on Wednesday announced an audacious plan to build what is essentially the most cutting-edge broadband network in the U.S. While it’s being misportrayed in certain segments of the media as an ISP effort, in reality it’s nothing more than an experimental network, much like Google’s early efforts to provide municipal Wi-Fi in the city of Mountain View, Calif. It will be a trial-only network, not Google’s entry into telecommunications services. And while the planned network won’t be cheap, in the end it will be worth the price.

The idea behind the network: provide bandwidth and see if it fosters new user behavior and thus innovations. I admire Google for creating a real-life laboratory that will provide intelligence to predict not only the future of the web, but also help it develop new products to stay relevant. By announcing this network, Google also showed why it’s quite distinct from its onetime peers such as Yahoo and AOL.

When I said that Google’s plan was audacious, I said so because of the cost. For starters, Google wants to offer 1 gigabit-per-second speeds to some 50,000 to 500,000 people. At 2.6 people per household, that roughly translates to between 20,000 and 200,000 homes. Our friend Ben Schachter, Internet analyst with Broadpoint AmTech, estimates that it will cost Google between $3,000 and $8,000 per home, or roughly $60 million to $1.6 billion, depending upon the final size and footprint of the network. If Google reaches, say, 100,000 homes, it would cost the company about half a billion dollars.

The folks from Calix Networks, a company that sells gear for FTTP networks, have developed an equation that allows them to calculate the cost per household depending on population density, which, according to them, is the single most important factor in calculating the cost of FTTP connection per home. These costs are quite varied, in some cases as much as $4,000 to connect a single home. Google’s final tab will depend on where it decides to build out the network.

The end cost is also determined by the kind of technology the company uses. While Passive Optical Networking technologies have come a long way — newer versions of Gigabit PON (GPON) have a range that extends up to 40 kilometers — there is a better than good chance that Google will opt for an all-Active Ethernet approach. Mike Fox, business development manager for the carrier networks division at telecom equipment maker Adtran, says that both technologies can get the job done. It just depends on how Google wants to build its network. Fox helped me break down the comparative costs of the two technologies.

A typical PON is made of two pieces: an optical line terminal (OLT) at the service provider’s central office, and an optical network terminal (ONT), which is used to terminate the fiber optic line and is typically outside the customer’s premises. A single ONT costs about $330, according to Fox. Since PON is a shared fiber technology, OLT costs are calculated in terms of ports and are about $80 per port. So the total per household is about $410. The fewer the number of ports, the higher the per-home costs.

Of course, when taken together with other costs such as fiber and construction, things start to add up pretty fast. In comparison, an Active Ethernet-based network is pretty much like a corporate Ethernet network. It’s a giant switched Ethernet infrastructure. It costs over $600 in electronics for an Active Ethernet-based network. This is closer to what Google has in mind, according to some experts I spoke with. But that’s not all.

Mike Day, chief technology officer of ADC Telecommunications, told me that this network is going to be a lot more expensive than somewhat similar ones. It would need a really fast switching fabric that in turn would be connected to the Internet backbone at astonishingly fast speeds. This seamlessness is what will bring true speed to the homes on the test network. Think of this as building a smooth Autobahn from the home to the backbone. Day said the network would need to overcome some major design challenges such as different data center architecture and a different style of servers that don’t become a bottleneck and are able to leverage the 1 Gbps speeds.

Is spending this much money — even for Google, which has about $25 billion in cash — a good idea? I think so. Just as car companies spend their R&D dollars on Formula One Racing teams to get a better idea of what new features could be included in their commercial vehicles, a company such as Google needs to explore the outer limits of broadband. (I will explore more on this topic in a different post.)

In addition, “Google has a secondary motivation here and that is to also push the FCC to accelerate its examination of using TV white spaces for wireless broadband,” says Jeff Heyman, broadband and video analyst for Infonetics Research. He points out that if “Google can make this endeavor successful for a number of communities, why couldn’t they do so for even more using white spaces? This FTTH initiative, in other words, could be a proving ground for Google as infrastructure provider.”

Is that likely? Perhaps not — but as someone who hearts broadband, I hope Google’s desire to push the limits brings about the change we so badly need.

What Can You Do With 1 Gigabit?

Om Malik — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:10:05 +0000

Google earlier today announced that it would be launching an experimental fiber-to-the-home network that would offer speeds of as much as 1 gigabit per second. The question is, what can you do with this much speed?

Our philosophy has long been that broadband is a platform of innovation and thus there will emerge new applications from the proliferation of fat pipes — whether they are wired or wireless.

Stacey had offered up five bandwidth-hungry applications that included high-definition telepresence, telemedicine, video instant messaging and video presence, HD television and real time data back-ups. Internet-based storage services and in-cloud personal video recorders are other options for fat pipe usage. Of course, with that much speed even our desktops can be offered on desktop.

So the question to you gentle readers: If you had 1 gbps to your home, what would you do with it?

OECD: U.S. Largest, If Not The Fastest, Broadband Market

Om Malik — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:05:55 +0000

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released its report on broadband usage and penetration with some interesting findings and observations. Instead of bemoaning the problems of broadband here in the United States, how about some highlights from the 151-page report, which I hope to dig into later today:

At the end of 2007, U.S. broadband companies had 69.9 million subscribers, making it the largest OECD country by total number of subscribers, and represented 30 percent of the total OECD subscriber base.
The United States ranks 15th with a broadband density of 23.3 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
Denmark has the highest broadband density at 35.1 percent.

Fiber-based broadband (FTTH/FTTB) is now 8 percent of the total OECD installed base, making it one of the fastest growing broadband technologies. Japan has 40 percent of its connections on fiber. Korea comes next with 34 percent.
Luxembourg is the fastest growing OECD market by per capita subscriber growth, followed by Germany and Ireland. The three countries added 5 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, Korea and Sweden all have broadband densities of more than 30 percent.
The average speed of advertised connections increased from 2 Mbit/s in 2004 to almost 9 Mbit/s in 2007 with prices coming down 16 percent for cable and 19 percent for DSL in that time frame.

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As Broadband Growth Slows, Expect Speed Boosts

Om Malik — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:12 +0000

The demand for broadband in the U.S., after growing at an explosive rate for almost two years, has started to slow, largely due to high market penetration rates and a struggling economy. UBS Research forecasts that the number of U.S. broadband connections will grow 11 percent in 2008, down from growth of 16 percent in 2007. The carriers — the cable operators and phone companies — are beginning to feel the impact, and are subsequently looking for ways to squeeze more dollars out of the broadband business.

Verizon, for example, is pushing people to sign up for its more expensive FiOS service. Others are looking to use “speed boosts” as a way to lift their ARPU. This is not a new strategy: BellSouth, before it was acquired by AT&T, made good money by selling higher-speed tiers at a premium.

The latest company to follow this path is Windstream, a Little Rock, Ark.-based RLEC. The company said recently that it’s offering 12 Mbps ADSL2 service in some parts of its 16-state network. More importantly, it has increased its lowest-speed tier to 3 Megabits per second. Our good friends at DSLReports add that Windstream is offering the 12Mbps/1Mbps tier for $19.99 for the first six months, and $45 per month after that.

In recent months, Comcast started experimenting with 50 Mbps service (in Minneapolis), while Qwest said it it will start offering two new, higher-tier services — Qwest Connect Quantum (20 Mbps) and Qwest Connect Titanium (12 Mbps) — in certain cities. Broadband providers will have to convince consumers that they need the speed boost, however — that speed can improve their online experience.

It should come as no surprise that the carriers have let go of incremental speed upgrades and have gone ahead and doubled or tripled the speeds of their offerings. Why? Because bumping speed to 2 Mbps from 1 Mbps doesn’t really feel like a big boost. A 6X speed bump, on the other hand, makes the Internet much faster — and worth paying for. Suddenly, Hulu and YouTube become much more fun to watch. If a subscriber believes that he or she can download music, stream videos and connect to their favorite social networks faster, they will pay a premium price for that speed.

Never mind the fact that how fast content gets delivered to our computers is mandated by not just access speeds but several factors, such as congestion on the backbone networks and servers’ ability to dish out data. As our accompanying chart shows, the downstream speeds might be going up, but the carriers are stifling innovation by controlling the upstream speeds.

Broadband 2.0 is all about collaboration and sharing, and that requires just as much upstream bandwidth as it does downstream speeds. Regardless, this coming year is going to be fun as the cable companies and phone operators will do unnatural things to entice new subscribers, starting with offering faster connections at lower prices. Nothing wrong with that.

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