The 7th annual conference of the FTTH Council Europe which has the goal of promoting debate and sharing information on new services, applications and content for optical fibre to home networks (FTTH– Fibre-To-The-Home), has been underway since yesterday at FIL - Feira Internacional de Lisboa and finishes today. The opening session will be attended by Portugal’s Prime Minister, José Sócrates, and the Chairman of ANACOM’s Management Board, José Amado da Silva. This Authority will also be represented at the conference by Management Board Member, José Ferrari Careto, who was one of the speakers at Breakout Session 2: Regulatory Status, which saw debate on the question of regulation.
Among the various conference events, note is made of the release of a study on the European FTTH market in 2009, which reveals the entry of Portugal, France, Czech Republic and Bulgaria into the global rankings of the European economies which lead the market of fibre to the user’s home – countries where more than 1 per cent of houses (FTTH) or existing buildings (FTTB ? Fibre to the Building) are connected to optical fibre networks.
As far as Portugal is concerned, the study reports annual growth of 186 per cent in the number of FTTH access subscribers, rising from 14,500 in December 2008 to 41,500 in December 2009. In terms of cabled households, the rate of growth was even stronger in 2009, with the number reaching 1.15 million in December 2009, representing an increase of 475 per cent over the same period of 2008, when only 200,000 houses were cabled.
At a European level, the rankings show that there were 2.5 million FTTH access subscribers (3.5 million if including Russia), the majority of which are concentrated in seven countries: Sweden, Italy, France, Lithuania, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark.
On 24 February, the FTTH Council Europe also released the latest edition of the FTTH Handbook.
Consult:
- Presentation of ANACOM's chairman, José Amado da Silva, made at the opening session of 7th FTTH Council Europe Conference, 24 and 25 February, Lisbon https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1013676
Further information:
- FTTH Handbook 2010 http://www.ftthcouncil.eu/documents/studies/FTTH-Handbook-Third_Edition.pdf
- FTTH EU Ranking per end of 2009 http://www.ftthcouncil.eu/documents/press_release/PR_EU_rankings_Lisbon_Final.pdf
