Japan, GEPON dominate FTTH

Japan utterly dominated fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) growth last year, contributing 80% of the world’s FTTH subscriber growth, according to data released by Dittberner & Associates this week.

Japan added 2.2 million FTTH subscribers last year, making it the only market in world to add more FTTH subscribers than DSL subscribers. Combined with VDSL, which is used to serve multiple dwelling units, half of all Japanese households have access to some sort of fiber-based broadband. The government’s goal is to bring fiber to 30 million homes at the rate of about 3 million per year.

Japan’s preferred fiber access technology--Gigabit Ethernet passive optical networking (GEPON)--also dominates the market, making up 66% of all ports shipped last year. Combined, Japan’s three FTTH equipment vendors—Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Hitachi—supplied 72% of the FTTH ports shipped last year, Dittberner said.

The biggest U.S. vendor of fiber access gear, Tellabs (which supplies its biggest customer, Verizon Communications, with BPON gear), shipped only 8% of the world’s FTTH ports last year. Going forward, the domestic FTTH market is expected to be dominated by GPON technology, a higher speed successor to BPON, which was originally based on the ATM technology used by large U.S. carriers.