Asia moves beyond broadband

Over 40 million users in Asia will have home fibre internet connections by 2010

Asia will move rapidly beyond first-generation broadband networks by rolling out home fibre internet services with speeds of up to 100Mbps, according to analyst forecasts.

More than 40 million users in Asia will have home fibre internet connections by 2010, predicts The Diffusion Group, a Dallas-based research consultancy, in a report published yesterday. 

About five million people in Asia had Fibre to the Home (FTTH) connections at the end of last year, the vast majority of them in Japan, with a smaller number in South Korea.

Analyst firm In-Stat predicted in January that revenue generated from fibre internet services in Asia would increase from $4.4bn in 2005 to $10.3bn by the end of 2009. 

The rest of the world will continue to lag behind Asia in ultra-high speed fibre internet services, according to The Diffusion Group.

"Asians are the most bandwidth-hungry consumers in the world. Young urban professionals, in particular, have come to view residential fibre connectivity as a status symbol," said the research firm.

In addition, Asia's very high population density makes it easier and cheaper for operators to roll out networks, compared to areas like the US where a significant proportion of the population is spread out over a wide area.

Observers have suggested that Asia's network operators are preparing their FTTH infrastructure for lucrative media distribution services, like IPTV and video on demand.

Other services, like high quality video phone calls, are also expected to be heavy bandwidth consumers.

"This may sound crazy to European or North American operators offering 1Mbps to 10Mbps," said Frank Marum, senior analyst with The Diffusion Group and co-author of the fibre internet report.

"However, many Asian operators are concerned that emerging usage models will require between 60Mbps to 80Mbps of consistent throughput.

"When you start to pipe a wide variety of bandwidth-intensive, two-way services over a broadband connection, the headroom of a 30Mbps connection can vaporise quickly."

There is still a very wide disparity in the level of service offered across Asia, however, even in more developed regions.

Many Japanese urban residents, for example, have enjoyed $50 per month 100Mbps fibre connections for several years.

This is a result of an early government campaign to skip a generation in telecoms infrastructure technology.

The Japanese government now estimates that there are about five million fibre internet connections in the country, or around one quarter of the country's broadband connections.

However, in neighbouring Taiwan, fibre internet services are only used by a handful of early adopters because they are not heavily promoted and still cost thousands of dollars a month in most areas.

In Taiwan, prevarication and disorganisation at the country's chaotic telecoms giant, Chunghwa Telecom, are usually blamed for repeated delays in high-speed fibre roll outs.