AT&T believes it will eventually get take rates for its fiber-to-home service, across 14.5 million households, “to a 50 percent mark over the three-year period” from activation, said Jeffery McElfresh, AT&T Communications CEO.
AT&T bases that forecast on past experience. “As you look at the fiber that we built out in the ground in 2016, at the three-year mark, we roughly approach about a 50 percent share gain in that territory,” said McElfresh.
Adoption levels at that level would be historically high for an incumbent telco, as Verizon has in the past gotten FiOS adoption in the 40-percent range after about three years.
Take rates for FTTH services globally vary quite a lot, and may be an artifact of network coverage. U.S. FTTH accounts are low, but mostly because perhaps 66 percent of fixed network accounts are on cable TV hybrid fiber coax plant. Telcos collectively have only about 33 percent market share.
South Korea seems an odd case. In South Korea, FTTH take rates seem to be only about 10 percent, for example, though network coverage is about 99 percent.
In Japan and New Zealand, take rates have reached the mid-40-percent range, and network coverage might be about 90 percent. But in France and the United Kingdom, FTTH adoption is in the low-20-percent range.
That is why AT&T’s expectation that its FTTH adoption will reach 50 percent is important. It would reverse the traditional market share of a telco in the fixed network internet access market from 33 percent of customers to perhaps half.
No comments:
Post a Comment