FTTH Covered Nearly 90% of Residents in Urban Areas in China

CAICT released Broadband Development Analysis in 1H16 on September 7 which shows that China has made great progress in broadband construction in both rural & urban areas. Subscribers of high-speed broadband increased rapidly during the period and China is entering the era of gigabit-level broadband capacity.

 

 

FTTH has been aggressively promoted in urban areas. The buildings built in cities in 2016 have been all covered with optical network. FTTH has covered 704 million residents and subscribers of the four major operators whose home has been covered with FTTH accounted for about 90% in China. The coverage rate was almost 100% in some provinces like Tianjin and Jiangsu.

 

 

China has been improving the broadband speed aggressively in rural areas. FTTH was achieved in over 80% of the administrative villages by the end of May 2016 while the access bandwidths in over 50% of the administrative villages were above 12Mbps. FTTH ports in rural areas accounted for 31.6% of the total nationwide.

 

 

The popularity of high-bandwidth applications such as 4K TV increased the demands for megabytes-level bandwidth. To solve the problems EPON, GPON and other technologies met with, the operators in Shanghai and some other regions have been aggressively deploying 10G PON, based on FTTH deployments.

 

 

Showing stable growth in 1H16, fixed broadband access subscribers hit 273.75 million by the end of May 2016 with a penetration rate of 20.4%, which is estimated to exceed 21% in 2016.

 

The broadband subscribers rapidly migrated to FTTH in 2016. FTTH broadband subscribers increased 62.18 million in the first five months this year, accounting for 66.4% of the broadband users, and they are estimated to increase to 80%, almost reaching 100 million by the end of 2016.In addition, subscribers of fixed broadband of 8M or above accounted for 79.7% by May 2016, and those of 20M or above, 47.7%.