March 30, 2006 Dallas, TX -- New research from The Diffusion Group (TDG) predicts that the number of Asian FTTH users will grow eightfold in the next five years, from five million in 2005 to more than 40 million in 2010. TDG's latest report says that by 2010, FTTH will account for more than 25% of all Asian residential broadband subscriptions.
According to the report, a number of factors have come together to help make FTTH more compelling for Asian operators and government officials. First is the demand for more powerful Internet connections among Asian consumers. The report contends that "Asians are the most bandwidth-hungry consumers in the world," and notes that the continent's young urban professionals, in particular, have come to view residential fiber connectivity as a status symbol.
The second factor is urban population density. According to the report, the most affluent and Internet-dependent Asians continue to congregate in dense urban areas comprised of apartments or other multi-dwelling units (MDUs). This user density makes FTTH deployment more economical and thus more attractive to operators - an aspect which changes the entire business proposition, maintains TDG.
The report says the third factor driving the interest of Asian operators in FTTH is the lack of network headroom. "Yes, this may sound crazy to European or North American operators offering 1-10 Mbit/sec," offers Frank Marum, senior analyst with TDG and co-author of the report. "However, many Asian operators are concerned that emerging usage models will require between 60-80 Mbit/sec of consistent throughput. When you start to pipe a wide variety of bandwidth-intensive, two-way services over a broadband connection, the head room of a 30 Mbit/sec connection can vaporize quickly."
The report, "The FTTH Market in Asia: Analysis & Forecasts," provides a detailed study of Asian's growing telecommunications market with particular focus on the current status of FTTH deployments and expected fiber deployments in China, India, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian nations. The report also provides an extensive business case analysis including: opex and capex projections; market drivers and inhibitors for global FTTH growth; and a case study of a 100,000 user greenfield FTTH deployment. Further, the report includes a regionally-specific "tipping point" analysis that predicts when FTTH will achieve superior economics over other fixed-line broadband technologies and finally be more compelling in brownfield deployments.