FTTx connections rise 69% in Europe

European operators are continuing to adopt fibre access solutions to meet their customers’ needs and deliver on the vision of a well-connected home, according to a new report from industry body the Broadband Forum (formerly the DSL Forum).

Hybrid Fibre-to-the-x (FTTx) deployments have been particularly prolific, according to the report, with a 69 per cent surge in the 12 months to September 2011, reaching 9.8 million connections.

“The future of Europe, at least for the next five years, is going to be dominated by FTTx,” said Oliver Johnson, CEO at UK research firm Point Topic, which prepared the study for the Broadband Forum. “The cost of full fibre (FTTH) deployment, particularly the last mile, is prohibitive and so the industry and consumers need a stepping stone which is provided by hybrid solutions such as FTTx. FTTx provides a significant increase in bandwidth and an efficient use of existing infrastructure and allows the welcome continued amortisation of costs.”

There were 741,563 new Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) connections added in Europe in the 12 months to September 2011, reaching 3.2 million. The number of DSL broadband connections increased by 9.2 million in the 12 month period to reach 125.8 million by September 2011, while the number of cable broadband connections rose by just under two million to reach 25.8 million.

The report adds that strong customer demand for IPTV services in Europe and active fibre rollouts in the region mean that it still accounts for the lion’s share (23.5 million) of global IPTV subscribers (nearly 55 million).

Fibre-related initiatives which are currently being driven by the Broadband Forum include test specifications for additional conformance testing modules for G-PON ONU, OLT and XG-PON1 as well as an interoperability test plan. Work to enhance PON device management via CPE WAN Management Protocol (TR-069) is also in place, and new PON energy efficiency efforts are under way, the industry body reports.