Ovum: 1Q FTTX growth dramatic; DSL not so much

Market research and analysis firm Ovum reports that next-generation access (NGA) network upgrades led to “dramatic” growth in the FTTX and cable modem termination system (CMTS) markets during the first quarter of 2011. The news wasn’t so good for makers of DSL equipment, Ovum says in its new market share report, Market Share Alert: 1Q11 FTTx, DSL, and CMTS.

Ovum says the number of PON optical line terminal (OLT) ports for fiber to the home (FTTH) and building (FTTB) applications reached 988,889 in the first quarter of 2011. This represented an increase of 35 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010 and 182 percent versus the same quarter a year ago. Asia-Pacific accounted for 93 percent of the total, which was good news for Huawei, ZTE, and FiberHome. The three Chinese PON equipment suppliers occupied the first three places for PON OLT port shipments in the quarter, Ovum says.

“Shipments also jumped in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region and in the South and Central America region to their highest levels ever,” Kamalini Ganguly, Ovum analyst and author of the new market report, added.

But DSL technology largely was left out of the upgrade activity. The market edged down 5 percent when compared to the last quarter of 2010. Ovum says it expected the decrease due to normal seasonal trends; it was consistent with the 4 percent sequential drop in the first quarter of 2010 and 2009. However, Ovum adds that DSL growth has slowed or turned negative in some countries, with DSL links replaced by FTTB or FTTH connections.

However, the news for DSL wasn’t all bad. Said Ganguly, “Despite the sequential drop in the first quarter of 2011, year-on-year shipments were higher in all regions, many supported by upgrades related to FTTN [fiber to the node] and FTTB rollouts. In fact, the first quarter of 2011 was another record quarter for VDSL2 shipments, which crested to 4.8 million ports.”

According to Ovum’s market analysis, Alcatel-Lucent currently leads the VDSL/VDSL2 market with 42 percent market share, followed by Huawei with 22 percent and Ericsson with 8 percent.

Ovum’s findings largely agreed with those of Infonetics Research, which released its 1Q11 figures last month (see “Infonetics: 1Q11 PON sales jump while DSL plunges”). Infonetics reported the total market space for all three technologies in the quarter was $1.96 billion worldwide.

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