Broadband Communities

MAY-JUN 2012

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.

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FTTH INDUSTRY REPORT Small Telcos, Municipal Systems Dominate New FTTH Builds There is indeed life after FiOS, according to the latest numbers from Michael Render of research firm RVA. Although Verizon is still building FTTH, the momentum has passed to smaller providers. By Steven S. Ross ■ Broadband Communities T he pace of fiber-to-the-home de- ployments in North America picked up during a mild winter, and deployers passed 1 million addi- tional homes with fiber from September 2011 to March 2012, according to the latest report from market researcher Mi- chael Render of RVA. He presented his findings at this year's Broadband Com- munities Summit in April. A total of 22.6 million homes are now passed by fiber – meaning that fi- ber comes close enough for the homes to be connected to a network. Of that 22.6 million, 19.3 million homes are actively marketed – which means households have the option of buying fiber broad- band services. Tere are 8 million homes connected to FTTH in North America, mainly in the United States. One Amer- ican home in every five is now passed by fiber. Te 1 million homes passed last fall and winter compares well to the 800,000 additional homes passed in the period from March to September 2011. How- ever, the total for the full year – 1.8 mil- lion – is still well below the 2.5 million added from March 2010 to March 2011 and below the 3 million added from September 2009 to September 2010. NO SLOWDOWN FOR SMALLER DEPLOYERS Still, the pace of non-RBOC FTTH de- ployments in the United States (essen- The pace of fiber-to-the-home deployments by smaller providers has remained remarkably constant over the past two years. tially all deployers except Verizon and AT&T;) has remained remarkably con- stant over the past two years. In other words, most of the decline in fiber net- work builds is attributable to the slow- down in the Verizon FiOS project. What's more, deployments in Mex- ico (1.6 percent of the total) and Canada (3 percent) have begun to show up in the numbers. Tere is even a small contri- bution from the Caribbean – about 0.3 percent of the total. In the United States, broadband stimulus funding has helped keep the fires lit – and the party is not over. On average, Render says, although all stim- ulus funds have been allocated, "end- user FTTH projects are only just over one-third complete." Tis contrasts to the middle-mile fiber trunk projects funded by the Commerce Department's part of stimulus funds. Funding for the Commerce NTIA proj- ects was in the form of outright grants and tended to be handed out faster than were loans and grants for FTTH from the Agriculture Department's Rural Util- ities Service. Te NTIA projects appear to be further ahead, on average. Render also estimates that 855 FTTH providers have fewer than 10,000 subscribers each. Some are municipal projects, but more than 700 are small telephone companies, usually operating as Tier 3 incumbent local exchange car- riers (ILECs). Another 13 carriers have between 10,000 and 20,000 subscribers, seven have between 20,000 and 50,000 and only five are larger than 50,000. Because the biggest of all is Verizon, with more than 6 million FTTH cus- tomers, the market share is also wildly skewed. Render says Tier 1 ILECs (which are no longer limited to the for- mer Regional Bell Operating Compa- nies now that Qwest has merged into About the Author Corporate Editor Steve Ross can be reached at steve@bbcmag.com. 78 | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com | MAY/JUNE 2012

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