Fiber-optic broadband service revenue grew over 15 percent to $46 billion in 2013, said ABI Research. The fiber-optic broadband market will generate $100 billion revenue in 2019.
Some of the telecom carriers including British Telecom of the UK and VimpelCom of Russia earlier said that growth in their fiber-optic broadband customers contributed to overall service revenue growth in 2013.
“Since revenue from traditional services such as voice and messaging is declining, innovative services and content over high-speed broadband networks are proving essential for operators to maintain overall service revenue growth,” said Khin Sandi Lynn, industry analyst, ABI Research.
The cable, DSL and fiber-optic fixed-line broadband subscriber base rose 6 percent to 665.4 million subscribers in 2013, said ABI Research.
The fiber-optic broadband segment grew 29 percent to 126.6 million subscribers in 2013.
By 2019, fiber-optic broadband subscriptions will grow to 265 million subscribers, with a CAGR of 11.7 percent.
The global cable broadband market grew nearly 7 percent to 161 million subscribers while the DSL broadband market reduced around 1 percent to 378 million subscribers in 2013.
An increasing number of customers opting for high-speed fiber-optic broadband service contributed to a decline in DSL broadband subscriptions in Asia-Pacific and North America.
DSL broadband service revenue dropped nearly 2 percent in 2013, mainly due to a declining subscriber base and average revenue per user in the Asia-Pacific.
ABI Research noted that Chinese operators dominate the fixed broadband subscriber rankings. China Telecom and China Unicom lead the global fixed broadband market shares with over 100 million and 64 million broadband subscribers respectively at the end of 2013.
Currently the two companies own 53 percent and 34 percent market share respectively. China Mobile received a license to invest in fixed broadband services at the end of 2013, likely spurring the Chinese fixed broadband market to have greater competition and faster infrastructure development.
ITU on broadband
Earlier, telecom industry body ITU said by the end of 2013, the number of broadband subscriptions in the developing world will exceed the number of broadband subscriptions in the developed world for the first time, in both fixed and mobile, respectively. Much of this fresh growth is located in emerging markets.
In China, 75 percent of all Internet users now access the Internet via a mobile device, exceeding the proportion of users accessing the Internet via a fixed connection (at 71 percent) for the first time in 2012.
Even if the future is mobile, fixed broadband will still play a vital role. For operators, fixed networks and backhaul networks are helping accommodate growth in mobile traffic, with a third of all mobile data traffic offloaded to fixed networks in 2012, according to Cisco.
