JUNE 9, 2008 -- According to Dittberner's (search for Dittberner) "DSL, FTTH and FTTB/LAN Shipment Analysis," FTTH shipments rose to 1.9 million ports, an 11% quarterly increase and a 33% year-on-year increase. Even though this was a healthy increase, it was still lower than was forecasted by Dittberner, due to a shift to more apartments being connected in Japan and slower than expected growth in Korea and USA.
The Japanese domination of the FTTH market is slipping, Dittberner asserts. Although Mitsubishi is still the leader, Tellabs challenged Sumitomo for second place. Due to Verizon's switch to GPON technology, Tellabs is expected to fade. Alcatel-Lucent, who is Verizon's main GPON supplier, and Nokia Siemens, who is the main supplier to Korea Telecom, rounded out Dittberner's Top 5 spots.
Japan, with 7 million homes and 2 million apartments connected with fiber, is the largest installed base and a bigger market than Korea and the USA combined, the research and analysis firm says.
It is not surprising that GePON, the preferred technology of Japan's service providers, is the technology with the largest share, Ditteberner continues. However, GPON, which is preferred over GePON in North America and Europe, saw its shipments increase greatly as Verizon switched to GPON from BPON this quarter for all its new CO deployments. Since Verizon has the largest deployment of BPON, BPON's share is expected to decrease rapidly this year.
As the debate over whether P2P or P2MP PON architecture is best rages on, the company says there is no clear advantage to either architecture in all situations. The best option hinges on whether the service provider's business model requires them to be the sole provider of services to be profitable and their cost of installing cable, Dittberner states. In 1Q08, P2P Ethernet, which is preferred for smaller deployments and premises data networks, benefited from the continued shift of the Japanese market to a higher percentage of apartments being connected compared to private homes.
Cisco is the leader in P2P Ethernet, along with Ericsson, PacketFront, and Iskratel. This technology shows enough promise that Alcatel-Lucent has recently entered the market as well, Dittberner concludes.
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