Around half the fibre subscribers in Europe are in Russia and other CIS countries. After Russia, which counts more than 17 million subscribers, the largest markets are Spain (4.5 million after 72% growth), France (3.2 million, 32% growth) and Romania (2.7 million, 17 percent growth). In the 28 member countries of the EU, there were more than 20.5 million FTTH/B subscribers at the end of September, equal to 9.4 percent of households.
The Baltic countries continue to have the highest penetration of FTTH/B, at 45.2 percent of households in Latvia subscribed to fibre and 40.3 percent in Lithuania. Sweden moved up to second place in the rankings, at 40.7 percent compared to 35.2 percent a year ago. France also showed rapid progress, growing to 11.1 percent penetration compared to 8.5 percent a year earlier. As a percentage of homes passed by fibre, France reached 28.8 percent in September 2016.
The European FTTH ranking includes all countries of more than 200,000 households where at least 1 percent of households subscribe to FTTH/B services. Serbia and Austria entered the list for the first time this year.
The research was presented at the FTTH Conference in Marseille. The FTTH Council Europe also announced that Deutsche Glasfaser received this year’s FTTH Operator Award, while Luis Alveirinho, director of engineering and operations at PT Portugal, received the Individual Award, for their outstanding efforts to accelerate the adoption of FTTH in Europe.
