The roll-out of FTTH in the Netherlands is set to accelerate in the coming years, after KPN stepped up its plans and other investors such as T-Mobile joined the market. The number of homes passed is expected to grow to 5.3 million or 65 percent of the total by the end of 2023, according to the latest edition of Telecompaper's annual report 'FTTH in the Netherlands 2019'.
The report shows the number of homes passed increased by 172,000 in 2018, when the focus was on smaller campaigns in rural areas. At the end of the year, 37 percent of homes in the Netherlands had access to FTTH. The roll-out is expected to grow to 385,000 new homes passed in 2019, driven by KPN's announced plans to restart its roll-out.
The growing coverage is helping FTTH increase its share of the broadband market. Fibre accounted for nearly 20 percent of broadband revenues in the past year, up from 17.4 percent two years earlier. It's mainly taking market share from DSL.
The growing interest in the market means the Netherlands is starting to see overlapping fibre marketing campaigns in some areas. This may lead to network duplication and could impact the overall growth of the market. Mainly outlying areas are affected, where operators want to cover a minimum number of households to make the network economical. However, competing campaigns can mean no single operator acquires enough subscriptions to roll out.
KPN is also complicating the picture. The incumbent does not conduct pre-marketing campaigns, instead choosing new fibre sites based on the state of the copper infrastructure. This may conflict with the roll-out plans of other providers, such as in Deurne, where both KPN and E-Fiber are planning a deployment.
The new fibre coverage also faces competition from VodagoneZiggo, which is planning to upgrade its cable network to gigabit speeds in the coming year. The growing speeds over cable could dampen consumer interest in fibre. Research by the Telecompaper Consumer Insights panel found significant interest in fibre still, but the level of interest is not increasing.
The increasing competition has attracted the interest of the regulator ACM. It's started an investigation to look at whether the roll-out strategic may be limiting competition.
