North American homes connected to fibre hit 9 million mark

The number of North American households connected directly into fibre networks has hit the 9 million mark, with small incumbent telephone companies continuing to lead the growth in fibre to the home deployments, according to the Fibre-to-the-Home Council Americas. At the FTTH industry's annual conference in Dallas, the Council announced that FTTH services are now available to 21.3 million North American homes, an increase of more than 10 percent over the past six months. All but eight of nearly 880 FTTH service providers surveyed have fewer than 30,000 subscribers, with only five having more than 50,000 access lines and 97 percent of than having fewer than 10,000, according to an analysis by RVA. The most notable of the big FTTH providers is Verizon, which serves more than half of the FTTH households in North America.

RVA found that more than a half million households in North America receive internet connectivity at or in excess of 100Mbps and that tested throughput speeds among survey respondents found FTTH subscribers are beginning to pull away from other access technologies in both download and upload capacity. Median tested download speeds were above 20Mbps for FTTH subscribers, compared to less than 15Mbps for cable modem users, while FTTH upload speeds were over 9Mbps compared to about 3Mbps for cable. 

In addition, results for the first comprehensive study on emerging FTTH deployment for Latin America found that all fibre networks now pass 4.2 million homes in the region, with 350,000 homes connected. The study also found Mexico is the leading FTTH market, followed by Brazil, with Chile and Argentina showing promise as deployments get underway in those countries.