Fiber-optic access booming in Asia

Stuttgart, Germany — 25th January, 2006 — In 3Q05, South Korea had the highest penetration of households with broadband access at 77%, according to InfoCom’s quarterly broadband monitoring. Amongst the other countries shown in the attached chart, Japan followed South Korea with 45% and then came the US at 39%. Most Western European countries lagged behind these countries, although we have to stress that differences within Western Europe are important, going for instance from 24% in Germany to 52% in the Netherlands; France and the UK having 35%. Naturally, less developed countries from Eastern Europe tend to have lower penetration rates, such as Poland with 10%. It is interesting to note that countries where both cable modem and xDSL (or indeed fibre optic) are developed tend to have higher overall broadband penetration, for instance Japan and South Korea. These two countries also lead in fibre optic technology, at 8% and 7% penetration respectively. In these countries, fibre optic access was aided by large investments in network upgrades both by the government and telecoms companies. Since fibre optic is now growing strongly, xDSL is now more or less stagnant or indeed decreasing now in South Korea. In the US, companies such as Verizon have started upgrading networks to provide fibre-to-the-home which partly accounts for the US having 1% of its total broadband access through other technologies.

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InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with almost 20 years experience providing strategic analyses and planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications, IT and multimedia industries. InfoCom’s independent and fact-based analyses highlight trends and opportunities, supporting decision makers to understand market dynamics in order to maintain their competitive advantage.
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