A new forecast from Ovum predicts a steep increase in fiber to the home/building (FTTH/B), brought on by increasing deployments of next-generation access broadband, and in some cases, significant government investment around the world.
There is a victim in the transition, however, according to the report. The worldwide market for DSL is expected to grind to a halt and even go into decline in many countries. This is nothing new in Asian nations like Japan and Korea, but Ovum says much of the Western World will see a fast spike in FTTH/B and a decline in DSL over the next couple of years. The most notable examples are the U.S., Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands.
It’s happening in emerging markets as well. China and Malaysia have very ambitious FTTH/B projects.
“Even if we take into account an element of government and vendor hype for these markets, Ovum still forecasts a rapid take-up of advanced broadband services in those countries,” Michael Philpott, practice leader of Ovum’s consumer team.
This take-up of next-generation access technologies such as FTTH and FTTB will see traditional DSL technologies saturate at around 320 million lines in the residential market by 2014, with FTTH/B still growing fast at over 160 million lines by the end of the same year. In Asia-Pacific, the move to FTTH/B will be even more pronounced, with FTTH/B connections overtaking DSL to be the leading technology in 2014, according to Ovum.
The forecast says DSL vendors shouldn’t be too discouraged.
“Eastern Europe, South and Central America, and Middle East and Africa will still be good growth regions for DSL operators, and thus vendors, for some years to come,” added Philpott.
Secondly, not all NGA developments are pure FTTH/B. A number, such as Japan, are actually a mix of NGA technologies, with the advanced DSL technology VDSL2 often being used in the final few hundred meters to connect apartments and individual homes to the fibre network. Other NGA developments, such as in Belgium and the U.K., will be predominantly fibre to the cabinet and then again VDSL2 in the final mile. Such NGA deployments are actually good news for DSL-based vendors as they signify the upgrade of millions of homes from ADSL line cards located in local exchanges to VDSL line cards located in street cabinets.
Thirdly, although worldwide growth will come to a standstill, there will still be more than 360 million DSL lines (including business lines) in operation in 2014, with maintenance contracts running for many years to come beyond that.
