Fiber Rules (when it comes to Capacity)

- 11.7 million homes passed with fiber
- 10 million homes marketed fiber
- 2.9 million homes connected with fiber
- Fiber penetration is growing faster than both Coax and Copper (still at around 100% growth year over year) - that doesn't surprise me!
- Penetration now at 10% of homes, but only 2% have a connection (elsewhere in North America outside of the US, only 0.1% are connected with fiber) ...

The number and variety of services over fiber is growing: 8 million households are offered services, and 1.6 million have accepted same (that's a 20% take rate, by my math ...). As for homes offered 100 Mbs connection - the premiere fiber service level - that number has grown from 12,000 in March 2007 to 17,000 in March 2008.

FTTH take rates are growing again, after dipping with the introduction of Verizon's mammoth fiber build out in 2004 - from a take rate of 41% in March 2004, the rates dipped, but are now back up to 29% in March 2008.

In contract, non-RBOC competition - mostly smaller fiber providers - is much more robust, around a 52% take rate, but to be sure, that's in less competitive areas, mostly rural areas with nothing close to FTTH as competition, so some take rates can go as high as 80%. And in some areas with no competition whatsoever, ILECs that completely replace their copper with FTTH make for a 100% take rate (consequently, the 52% number may be a little skewed).

Statistics can be a funny business. There's more, I just needed to catch my breath...

Fiber providers are a diverse lot - of course, there are more providers out there than just Verizon, though the big V is most certainly the 800 lb. gorilla in this industry. Verizon has over 2 Million connections while the remaining 593 other providers have only 833,000 connections between them. But interest in fiber is growing: 41% of ILECs (small telecoms) surveyed indicated they are very likely to have a fiber deployment in the next five years.

What do fiber projects look like? Well, 83% are "overbuild" projects, where service already exists, leaving only 17% as "Greenfield." New technologies have made it easier to deploy fiber, and cheaper too. When you focus on Master Planned Communities, you see that Brand New Developments have grown from 20% in 2004 to 80% in 2008.

According to Render, the current economic "downturn" (note: there is no official Recession yet!) will negatively impact fiber deployments - housing starts have declined - inventory is starting to work off, between 7 and 12 months, so he expects we'll see a turnaround. Nevertheless, you can't dismiss the fact that the economic climate has a dampening effect on fiber world - it's a rather depressing note to end on, if you ask me ...