Fiber deployments: June and July 2014

While analyzing the fiberoptics industry with KMI more than a decade ago, I became accustomed to following announcements of fiber network expansions. I can’t seem to break that habit. Here’s a small sampling of announcements from around the world over the last couple of months:

In Paraguay, TeleGeography reports about wireless carrier Tigo’s planned US$120 million expansion of its fiberoptic backhaul network. The article notes that Tigo’s network currently spans 5,693 km.

TeleGeography also reports about Algerie Telecom’s plans to add an additional 20,000 km to its existing 57,000 km fiber network by the end of 2015.

Lightwave reports that Allied Fiber has opened up the first segment of the southeast portion of its planned national dark fiber network; the newly available segment is a 360 mile span from Miami to Jacksonville. I’ll let you read Lightwave’s article for more info, including the fiber count and type of fiber installed.

In undersea cable news, I spotted a couple of recent announcements, as well.

As noted in this Light Reading article, Hibernia has recently begun construction on a 4,600 km Hibernia Express undersea cable connecting North America with the UK.

Meanwhile, per this InterAksyon.com report, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company is the lead investor in the 20,000 km Asia-America Gateway (AAG) undersea cable, connecting Southeast Asia and the Philippines with Hawaii and the U.S. west coast.

FTTH around the world: Some June and Early July Updates

Of course, FTTH news always catches my attention.

Total Telecom quotes FTTH Council Asia Pacific president Bernard Lee’s statement that the FTTH subscriber count in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to reach 100 million in late 2014.

In South Africa, TeleGeography reports that MTN SA has connected it first FTTH subscribers in Monaghan Farm, 30 km north of Johannesburg. Telkom SA also announced its FTTH plans in suburbs of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town. And Vumatel, in addition to its potential 2,100-home deployment in the Parkhurst suburb of Johannesburg, has announced plans to roll FTTH out to 200,000 homes across 100 locations in South Africa.

In the U.S., Lightwave reported about the progress of the municipal FTTH network in Loma Linda, California (all businesses and 1,600 houses are on-net, with 800 more home connections expected in the next 3 years) and the upgrade of Blue Valley Tele-Communications’ FTTH network serving 7,500 customers across 17 communities in Kansas.

Elsehwere in the U.S., Ethernut reports that a third neighborhood in Ridgeland, MS has passed C Spire’s 45% preregistration threshold required to qualify for deployment of 1 Gbps FTTH.

Richard Jones’ The Business of NGA/FTTX linked to a great telecompaper article noting that Telefonica’s 100,000 new Movistar customers in April and May bumped its total number of customers in Spain past the 800,000 mark.

And in Réunion, TeleGeography reports that Zeop has lit its FTTH network in Beausejour. Because how often do I get to mention Réunion Island?!

That’s just a sampling of recent FTTH announcements. So much going on in so many places! And yet, since I covered the industry in its early stages, I’m always drawn to industry updates.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the recent news excerpts assembled above.

And just for kicks, I’ll close this post with a “Throwback Thursday” link to a February 2002 CED article called “FTTx: An Unreal Reality Takes Shape,” which cited numbers from my 2001 KMI report on the FTTH industry (and in which I’m quoted).

Potential for Telecom Provider Consolidation in Europe & Beyond

I don’t really have much to add to Tim Poulus’ Communications Breakdown blog post I’m about to cite. Thanks to Rob Powell’s tweet this morning, I stumbled across this great Communications Breakdown blog post summarizing the potential for consolidation in the telecom industry (with most of his examples in Europe, it appears), featuring carriers as “hunters,” “the hunted,” and “undecided.”

Indeed, it’s such a good post, I won’t add anything, but on the heels of my mostly U.S.-focused (well, at least half U.S.-focused) post from a couple weeks ago, I thought this might be an interesting international follow-up.

Oh, and the Communications Breakdown post contains this interesting graphic from a biology text, too. (Bonus points for being clever.)

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