DSL the silent King of the APAC broadband market

By Tony Brown

Conventional wisdom has it that the APAC region is dominated by high-speed fibre networks and that nobody in the region could ever be so gauche as to still be running something as old hat as plain old DSL – nothing could be further from the truth.

Although the APAC region is the leading market in the region for FTTH/B deployment the plain truth is that it is DSL which is actually the leading fixed broadband access technology in the region – and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

At end-2010 341 million APAC homes could receive DSL services and, with strong growth still to be found in the mega markets of India and China, there will 491 million DSL capable homes by end-2016.

By contrast, total FTTH network homes reached just 70 million homes at end-2010 and, despite strong growth to come in key urban markets in China as well as continued growth in Japan, will reach 215 million at end-2016.

Indeed, with new technologies emerging to extract greater speeds from copper networks it looks likely that FTTH/B deployment in APAC could be restricted to developed markets with operators in developing markets choosing to sweat their copper assets.