Building a Business Case for FTTH in Europe

Broadband access in Europe has yet to keep up with consumer demands. Everyone agrees fiber to the home is an ideal technological solution. But how do operators across the region turn this into reality? Olivier Rousseaux explains how the economics of fiber is changing thanks to technology innovation.

As bandwidth demands rise sharply, and service providers face ever-increasing competition to win over subscribers, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is not only an ideal technological solution but a necessity for service providers to remain competitive.

Despite consumers buying bigger TV screens with more pixels, smarter mobile devices and accessing more cloud-based entertainment services, the pace of investment in fiber access networks across Europe has been relatively slow, especially compared to other regions in the world such as Asia Pacific, Middle East and North America. The business case has been particularly difficult to put together in countries that typically have high costs for new network construction, according to the FTTH Council Europe. Those who do decide to transition to fiber may struggle with speed of deployment and lack of skilled fiber technicians.

However, technology is improving, making it possible to improve the speed and cost of fiber network deployments which will ultimately improve the pace of FTTH rollout in Europe. CommScope is positioned to help service providers build a business case to implement fiber optic connectivity for broadband networks by speeding deployment and reducing overall costs.

As far as deployment speed is concerned, fiber indexing deployment can be seven times faster than classic technologies. Cost savings enabled by fiber indexing can be significant as well. The daisy chain topology reduces the amount of cable needed by up to 70 percent and hardened multi-fibre optical connectors substantially eliminate laborious and costly fiber splicing, further reducing overall costs.

CommScope solutions bring fiber deeper into the network and are designed to reduce total cost of ownership while accelerating time-to-market. To learn more, come visit us at booth G12 at the FTTH Council Conference in Luxembourg.