Chris Dziadul looks at FTTH deployment in CEE. The decision by Lithuania’s Teo LT to begin installing what will be the country’s first Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network is significant in a number of respects. Not only does it confirm the telco as one of the more progressive industry players in Central and Eastern Europe, but it could also pave the way for much bigger deployments across the region.
FTTH is well established in Japan, where the number of subscribers is expected to top 30 million by 2010, and in other parts of Asia. It is also growing rapidly in the US and several Western European countries, with the Danish company Bredbaand Nord, for instance, having last month announced the launch of a 46 TV channel service employing a 100Mbps FTTH network.
However, the picture is much more patchy in Central and Eastern Europe, though deployments have been announced or are already under way in some markets. In Croatia, for instance, the telco Vodatel has been providing subscribers with full triple play services via a FTTH network for almost a year, while in Slovenia the alternative telco T-2 has already constructed a FTTH network and the incumbent Telekom Slovenije is following suit.
Small-scale deployments are also understood to have taken place in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, in the latter case undertaken by the MSO RCS/RDS. Meanwhile in Russia, Golden Telecom’s subsidiary Corbina is currently constructing a FTTH network in Moscow.
The tempo of such deployments is likely to be stepped up in the months to come as demand for faster Internet access and the services it can deliver grows. In the case of TeliaSonera-backed Teo LT, FTTH is only part of the broader picture, with the company having recently also launched an IPTV service named Gala TV and begun DTT transmissions. Other telcos throughout the region look set to follow.