BROADBAND COMMUNITIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises.
Issue link: https://bbcmag.epubxp.com/i/145944
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS FTTH Customer Base Continues Strong Expansion Canadian and Mexican deployers helped buoy North American fber-to-the-home deployments, and growth in video use has buoyed revenues. Will Wall Street take notice? By Steven S. Ross / Broadband Communities W ith almost 1.4 million homes newly passed by fber in the six months ending March 2013, the pace of fber-to-the-home deployment in North America is exceeding long-term trends, even though it could not match the torrid pace of the prior six-month period. Te data comes from market researcher Michael Render of RVA LLC, who released his latest census of deployments as May drew to a close. His data gathering is funded in part by the Fiber to the Home Council Americas. Te slowdown from the prior six months, long predicted by Render, is due almost entirely to the windup of the U.S. stimulus program, which poured almost $7 billion into broadband projects starting in 2009. Fiber projects, both FTTH and middle-mile, dominated stimulus spending. Although the stimulus spending was dwarfed by Verizon and AT&T; capital investment involving fber in the same period, the needs of diverse stimulus-funded deployers (more than 400 local exchange carriers and municipalities) helped keep the industry's North American vendors afoat. New stimulus-funded middle-mile fber infrastructure, by reducing interconnection costs, also improved business cases for small deployers seeking to give their communities and themselves a business edge. As U.S. deployments have slowed, other North American network builders, most 68 | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com notably in Canada and Mexico, have picked up much of the slack. CONTINUED GROWTH Te number of homes passed by fber in North America – that is, homes that can readily be connected to fber – increased by 1.4 million to reach 25.7 million in March, Render says. Te number of FTTH homes actually being marketed to customers rose 1.5 million to 22.8 million. Tat's an increase of about 120,000 more than the increase in homes passed, refecting the fact that deployers are working of the backlog their summer 2012 construction boom caused. Te result was healthy growth in the number of North American FTTH customers, which rose by 690,000 to a total of 9.7 million. Te increase in the number of FTTH connections was below that of the March–September 2012 period but higher than in any other six-month period since September 2009. However, some of that growth was from outside the United States. Te U.S., with about 8.8 million homes connected, has 91 percent of the connected homes in North America, down slightly from 92 percent at this time last year. Elsewhere in North America, fber deployment has increased faster than in the U.S. Nevertheless, U.S. deployers have been more successful than those in other North American countries at turning homes passed into paying | July 2013