Fibre-Optic broadband access is growing across Europe as next generation broadband starts to take off.
A study done by IDATE on behalf of the Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council Europe showed that the rate of growth of Fibre-To-The-Home broadband went from 19% in June 2009 up to 29% by the end of December 2009.
Across Europe it is estimated that there is FTTH access available to 25 million homes and businesses with currently around 3.5 million taking subscriptions.
In Europe it was found that there was 249 FTTH projects taking place, with 136 of these being new initiatives that were launched since 2005.
The UK however does not show up on the tables for leading the way with FTTH, Norway top the charts with a coverage of 64.9% and Sweden in second spot with a FTTH coverage of 41.4% coverage.
It is countries in Western and Northern Europe that also lead the way in terms of subscriptions to FTTH services, with 67% of subscribers in these countries, Sweden, Italy, France, Norway, The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.
The UK we hope will start to feature in the next year or two as fibre broadband deployment is starting to take off a bit more here now, even though we have Virgin Media who are a cable provider the study did not include them. BT are starting the roll out of their own fibre network (BT Infinity), with around 2.5 million premises having FTTH installed by 2012 although the majority however are having FTTC (Fibre-To-The-Cabinet) installed which does not offer as fast speeds as it uses copper wires to deliver the broadband from the cabinet to the premises. Virgin Media are also looking to offer 100Mb fibre broadband via their DOCSIS 3 network.
What is considered one of the main issues with next generation high speed broadband connections is getting people to sign up to them, so a similar process that was needed to get people to change from dial up internet to standard ADSL broadband.