Fiber data shocker

The news that there are now more than 1 million fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers in North America came as a shock to some analysts last week, who found the claim difficult to swallow.

“I have serious doubts about this data,” one analyst told me privately. “There is no way the market outside of Verizon is growing that fast.”

“This kind of hype is bad for the FTTH segment because it sets false expectations,” said another, whose firm does its own research in the area.

The new numbers--which came from noted researchers Render Vanderslice & Associates (now known by the handier moniker RVA)--were certainly hard to square with another recent report on the subject from Ovum-RHK.

The Ovum-RHK report, released in August, said Verizon alone held 81% of this country’s FTTH subscribers at the end of the second quarter. Three months later, according to RVA, all the Bells combined (Verizon included) owned less than 64% of the FTTH subscribers in North America. And that’s despite Verizon moving full speed ahead with its fiber ambitions.

What accounts for the discrepancy? First of all, Ovum-RHK examined the U.S. market, a subset of RVA’s focus, which was North America. But no one is claiming Canada and Mexico make up the difference, as neither has very much FTTH. So where, then? Other than Verizon, one of the country’s most prolific FTTH deployers is West Coast competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) Surewest Communications. But that carrier typically adds less than a thousand subscribers per quarter. According to RVA, non-Bells as a group racked up about 187,000 subscribers over the past year--an average of more than 15,000 per month.

To hear RVA’s president and namesake Michael Render describe it (with the caveat that he can’t speak to other firms’ research methods), the growth is attributable to a sort of long tail effect: A very large number of small, separate FTTH projects--from municipalities, incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) and others--are adding up in a big way. ILECs own nearly 12% of today’s FTTH subscribers, he said; CLECs own more than 9%; municipalities and public utilities own 7%; developers own nearly 7% and cable companies own less than 2%.

The above-mentioned skeptics begrudgingly accepted that explanation, though one added, “[Optical network terminal] vendors I've spoken to wonder about [RVA’s] numbers as well, since they have not sold an amount of equipment into North America that would justify the numbers.”

So the issue remains a bit mysterious, I’m afraid. Will everyone who has FTTH please stand up?