Global Future of Optical Fiber Looks Bright

(Business News & Technology News, 23 Jul 2008)

Nearly 29 million subscribers were connected with fiber infrastructure worldwide at the end of 2007, according to market research firm Ovum. Most of the subscribers are receiving service via FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) or FTTB (fiber-to-the-Building). The two terms together are commonly called FTTP (fiber-to-the-premise). Figure 1 illustrates the global growth of fiber (or FTTx) for the years 2005-2012.





"The growth is expected to continue at a very fast pace with the number of fiber subscribers expected to grow to over 100 million by the end of 2012," says Lynn Hutcheson, Vice President of Ovum's Communications Components division based in Boston. "Today fiber broadband comprises 7.5 percent of all broadband users and is expected to be 16 percent of all broadband users by 2012."

Hutcheson explains that two fundamental fiber architectures are being deployed in today's access networks: point-to-multipoint which is commonly referred to as PON (passive optical networks) and point-to-point or P2P, also referred to as active Ethernet.

PON networks have a single fiber that runs from the central office to deep in the network and usually terminates at a splitter cabinet. While the splitter cabinet typically contains a 1x32 splitter, split ratios of 1x16 and 1x8 are sometimes used. New standards are calling for even larger split ratios of 1x64 and 1x128. From the splitter cabinet short runs of fiber connect each of the homes.

In contrast, with the P2P architecture a single fiber runs all the way from the central office to the home.

Both architectures are being deployed, with P2P currently outpacing PON installations as can be seen in Figure 2. The figure also shows that by 2012 PON will catch up to P2P, and it is expected that P2P will start to decline and PON will continue to grow and will dominate.





For densely populated regions of the world, high rise multi-dwelling units can take advantage of resource sharing through traffic aggregation with a centralized Ethernet switch or Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) in each building. In this case a dedicated single fiber link back to the central office makes a lot of sense. "China-India and Asia-Pacific are currently the leading regions for point-to-point access due to their large number of densely populated areas," says Hutcheson. "We expect Western Europe to catch up and surpass Asia-Pacific in the later years."

The PON market worldwide is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15 percent between 2005 and 2012, according to Hutcheson. North America will be more aggressive in its deployment of PON networks over the forecast period, while Asia-Pacific PON deployments will remain relatively steady. Ovum Research points out that the fastest-growing regions for PON sales are forecasted to be Western Europe and North America.

There are also movement betwen different flavors of PON. Starting in 2007, the migration from Broadband PON (BPON) to Gigabit PON (GPON) in North America began as the pricing of GPON became more attractive. In other places, Ethernet-based PON (EPON) is more popular. "Asia-Pacific and China-India will continue to favor EPON, although GPON will make its presence known in the later years of the forecast," says Hutcheson.





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