Europe's New Member States Continue to Dominate the FTTH Rankings

BRUSSELS, October 26, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- The number of fibre-to-the-home subscribers in Europe, including Russia, has increased by 22% over the past six months, thanks to the booming broadband market in the Eastern part of Europe, according to the latest figures from the FTTH Council Europe, which were announced today at the Broadband World Forum in Paris.

In absolute numbers, Europe has reached 3.2 million FTTH/B subscribers (nearly 4.5 million including Russia). And network deployment continues to bring fibre within reach of more homes: Europe now counts 18 million FTTH/B homes passed (more than 26 million including Russia), a growth of more than 6% during the first half of 2010.

The FTTH Ranking now includes 17 countries in Europe where more than 1% of households subscribe to broadband over a direct fibre connection. Lithuania is still the leader in the Ranking, just ahead of the more mature FTTH markets of Sweden and Norway. Notice that the top five fibre nations now include three New European Member States: Lithuania, Slovenia and Slovakia.

Romania enters the Ranking in 13th place with more than 120,000 FTTH/B subscribers. Bulgaria shows the fastest progression in the Ranking, moving from 16th to 8th position during first half of 2010. And Lithuania, still in first place, showed the second fastest growth rate, boosting subscriber penetration by 3.3 percentage points.

The majority of FTTH subscribers (74%) are concentrated in eight countries, in the following order: Sweden, France, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, The Netherlands, Denmark and Slovakia.

Major European economies such as Italy and France are still at the bottom of the Ranking, and others such as Britain, Germany and Spain are noticeably absent, although co-investment between operators and national plans initiated by governments could soon start to enhance FTTH/B coverage in those nations.

The Full Ranking for 2010 will be presented at the FTTH Conference, Milan, 9-10 February 2011 http://ftthconference.eu.

Note: The FTTH Global Ranking is based on the definition of FTTH/B agreed by the three FTTH Councils. It includes fibre to the home (FTTH), where the fibre connection reaches the household, and fibre to the building (FTTB), where fibre terminates inside the boundary of a multi-tenant building. The Ranking covers all countries with at least 200,000 households where the penetration of FTTH/B has reached at least 1% of the total number of homes.

http://www.ftthcouncil.eu

SOURCE FTTH Council Europe