Fiber to the Home Installations to Soar by 2004, Says Researcher

The number of fiber-optic connections stretching to homes will explode by 2004, the Fiber-to-the-Home Council announced Tuesday, citing data from market research firm Render, Vanderslice & Associates.

Fiber installations will soar by 330 percent next year from 72,100 homes passed to 315,000 homes passed and ultimately will reach between 800,000 and 1.4 million homes by 2004, according to the FTTH Council.

The study found that more than one percent of new homes built in the United States over the last six months were wired with fiber to the home.

The FTTH Council released the new study at the Fiber-to-the-Home Conference 2002 in New Orleans that started today.

The study was based on more than 600 interviews with industry experts, a census of current fiber-to-the-home projects and random samples of key fiber markets, according to the FTTH Council.

“This study clearly shows that fiber is the broadband technology of the 21st century and that the number of homes with fiber installed will reach a critical mass within a few short years,” says James Salter, president of the FTTH Council, in a statement released Tuesday.

The projections are relatively consistent with data from market research firm KMI Research, which a year ago predicted fiber would pass 860,000 homes by 2004.

“The early numbers that we had expected have been a little bit hurt by the economy [but] not as much as in other areas of telecom,” says Geoff Wilbur, a KMI Research analyst.

One reason: The independent rural telephone companies, municipalities and construction companies building fiber to the home are less susceptible to the telecom crash than the competitive local exchange carriers that buckled under heavy debt and stiff competition.

Analysts predict construction of fiber to the home will explode once the Bell operators overlay their networks with high-speed capacity, a move KMI anticipates in the 2005-06 timeframe. But “they are not going to move until they feel the heat,” Wilbur says.

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