FTTHblog points to an interesting article/executive summary on a research paper by RVA called Fiber to the Home: Advanced Broadband 2007. This executive summary includes many graphs, and a number of points there caught my eye:
- According to the report, average take rates for muni fiber projects are much higher than for incumbents, despite local disparities. This seems quite consistent with the high Zitius take rates mentioned by Olle Svensson in the interview I published a couple of weeks back. This should, perhaps, interest local and national governments looking at fiber to boost attractiveness and local economy...
- Verizon is clearly the largest grower on the US market in terms of homes passed and customers subscribed. However, and I quote here, smaller, often rural, telephone companies, along with municipalities and CLECs, account for a third of all FTTH customers in the US now. That's an interesting trend which again could lead us to question the nature and involvement of policy makers in the larger FTTH picture.
- PON is the most used technology in the US, but if Verizon (BPON moving to GPON) is excluded, then active P2P Ethernet accounts for a quarter of subscribers. That's interesting, since it implies that smaller players and local governments favour P2P, perhaps because it seems a longer term solution than PON.
- Finally, RVA - based on declared intentions - expects 100k subscriber adds per month until the end of 2007 and 200k from then on. Wow. That's huge. One of the conclusions from the report is that Verizon has a definite first mover advantage (AT&T passes 30.000 homes to Verizon's 6 millions) that should pay off by 2012.
Interesting reading anyway!
