Telecom Lead India: FTTH/B service revenues reached $29.6
billion in 2011.
Global revenues from DSL broadband services have seen
incremental growth in service revenue to reach $106 billion with a CAGR growth
of 14 percent in the last 5 years up until 2011.
Asia-Pacific is growth region for DSL broadband with
China playing a dominant role accounting for 33 percent of the worldwide
subscribers in 2011.
Copper networks are a cash cow for telephone companies,
delivering broadband over DSL to more than 367 million subscribers worldwide in
2011.
Fiber to the Home (FTTH) technologies bring ten times the
bandwidth compared to advanced DSL technologies. However, upgrades to advanced
forms of DSL require a fraction of the investment of upgrades to FTTH.
Financial instability in the advanced economies of
Western Europe and lack of innovative internet video services force Telco’s to
look into the cost to value proposition delivered by making large scale
investments into FTTH,” said Adarsh Krishnan, senior analyst of TV & Video
at ABI Research.
Strong government initiatives to develop fiber
infrastructure have in most cases been a necessary prerequisite to fund FTTH or
fiber to the building (FTTB) deployments. These incentives have been strongest
in Western Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Innovative internet video services including IPTV and OTT
(at HD resolutions) give Telco’s the necessary competitive edge for triple play
(telephone, internet and TV) and quad play (telephone, internet, TV and mobile
phone) services that have been lacking against competing cable operators.
Even in the absence of fiber upgrades Telco’s can compete
with triple-play services; for example, AT&T U-verse delivers IPTV over
ADSL2 at 15 Mbps bandwidth.