At least 100 million people are expected to sign up for gigabit-level fixed broadband access services by 2020, according to a new report from Point Topic – and at least some of that is going to be G.fast connections.
The Point Topic report – released Thursday in conjunction with the Broadband Forum’s quarterly meeting in Hong Kong this week – is forecasting the number of gigabit broadband subscribers grow at a CAGR of 65% between now and 2020, with close to 70% percent of that growth coming from the APAC region.
The Point Topic report says there are currently less than 10 million gigabit subscriptions, but that will change with more gigabit tariffs on the market than ever before, and the cost of services dropping.
G.fast – the ITU broadband standard that enables copper-based DSL to achieve gigabit-level data throughput speeds – will account for some of that growth. Although G.fast is currently only capable of such speeds over short distances, it can still meet the vast majority of operator demand, and will continue to evolve during that time, said Point Topic CEO Oliver Johnson.
“G.fast clearly works best economically in a mature market with copper in the local loop so I expect most of today’s leading markets will have some G.fast in the next five years and some should see coverage approaching 50% of the market,” Johnson said in a statement.
Johnson noted that there is a question of how long G.fast can effectively compete, particularly when it comes to the continued opex and capex required for end-to-end fiber. That will mainly depend on the next step of actually delivering it in the real mass-market world, he said.
“If it’s quick, clean, meets global standards and certifications such as those proposed by the Broadband Forum, and continues to offer significant NFV/SDN and vectoring improvements then [G.fast] will be strong tomorrow as well as today,” he said.
Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh urged broadband operators to consider G.fast as an option for their copper access networks – and, of course, to use Broadband Forum standards and certifications, such as the newly developed YANG management models for FTTdp equipment and the interoperability testing program for G.fast devices.
Mersh added the growth rate being forecast by Point Topic illustrates the scale of the issue the broadband industry is facing and why adopting key enabling technologies for ultra-fast access is so important.
“The growing trend of gigabit services points to the fact that more and more people want to use next-generation services, like 4K video, location-based services, security, home automation, video sharing, gaming and home office collaboration,” he said. “G.fast is how operators with copper in their networks can still enable all these things [and] the Broadband Forum programs and specifications are how those operators can exploit the promise of G.fast quickly.”
Source: http://www.telecomasia.net/content/100m-gigabit-broadband-subs-2020-report
