Fiber-optic broadband market share will reach 19 percent in 2013 from 16 percent in 2012.
“The number of broadband subscribers is growing on all DSL, cable, and fiber-optic platforms. However, there is a marked shift in consumer adoption from DSL to fiber-optic as operators continue to extend the reach of their fiber-optic infrastructure,” said Jake Saunders, VP and practice director at ABI Research.
This trend is taking place in both developed and emerging markets, said ABI Research’s Broadband Subscribers Market Data.
China is anticipated to see a declining trend in DSL broadband adoption in the next few years as China Telecom and China Unicom roll out fiber-optic networks.
In Q1 2013, DSL subscriptions dropped by 3 million. In the same period, fiber-optic adoptions grew from 32.9 million to 37.6 million.
Globally 25.6 million fiber-optic broadband subscribers will be added to eclipse 124 million subscribers in 2013. In the DSL broadband category, subscriber net addition is expected to drop by ~50 percent compared to 2012.
Fiber-optic to the home is not a viable solution. In semi-urban and rural locales, routing fiber-optic is uneconomical.
Recently, broadband operators such as Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, and British Telecom are testing vectoring VDSL2 which can provide broadband speeds of up to 100 Mbps over copper network.
Despite the rapid growth in fiber-optic broadband service, DSL broadband platform will remain as the dominate platform in the years to come.
picture source: ubergizmo.com
It will be interesting to see how fiber optic and gigabit service will transform the world. Fiber is capable of speeds up to 100 GigE and some people estimate that will reach 400 GigE. That will be a game changer for how people and businesses interact and use the Internet.