Some emerging markets are amongst the most "bandwidth-hungry" environments, even compared to the traditional, more mature North American and European markets.
At the same time, driving fibre forward to the subscriber is frequently being championed by competitive providers who can take advantage of reducing costs and massive variations in copper-based speeds between serving areas. This allows them to grab market share at the expense of the incumbent who is either still following a DSL-only strategy or slow to change because of its size and existing investment.
It is often the demand from SMEs that is the main driving force for competitive service providers in developing FTTH deployments. Winning significant market share in the business sector pays for the fibre rollout and then residential customers contribute significantly to the speed of return on investment in the network.
Studies from our own subscriber base in global rural deployments show that video still dominates the drive for fibre networks. At the same time, the growth in microcell LTE/4G networks also means that fibre will have to move closer to the subscriber’s premise, improving the business case for FTTH residential services.
