"Surprisingly perhaps, considering the decade’s worth of experience some Asia-Pacific countries have with FTTP, they face many of the same issues surrounding FTTP that have been prevalent in the West," says Felton.
The business model, for example, is no less an issue than in other markets. "Finding a sustainable business model" is as important for private players in the Asia-Pacific markets as you can guess it is for service providers elsewhere. High bandwidth provided at low cost might be great for consumers, but is challenging for providers.
Government subsidies and support in some markets is part of the answer for some providers, though.
Service innovation also is an issue. FTTH provides "more" bandwidth. But does it stimulate new applications and businesses that did not exist before? The answer, so far, seems to be "no." That is not to say broadband is unimportant as an enabler of economic activity.
But it is fair to say even after a decade of having FTTH, there is little to point to except online gaming, in terms of new and widely-used applications. "Even in Japan and South Korea, there aren’t that many disruptive or innovative services available to end-users, with the exception of online gaming," Felton says.
"While there’s been a vibrant development of Internet activities, especially in South Korea, this hasn’t necessarily resulted in the kinds of services that are generally expected, such as health care or connected communities," says Felton.
Sustainability, especially in a market context, remains an issue as well. While things have been slowly improving for early deployers, especially NTT, which announced at the conference that its average revenue per user for FTTP services has increased from 4,800 yen to 5,590 yen between 2006 and 2009, the revenue from fiber-grade services that actually benefits the telco remains limited.
Regulators, on the other hand, must continually monitor the degree of competition in the access market as well, and Felton notes that NTT has 75 percent market share in the fiber access market, but only 30 percent or so in the digital subscriber line market.
Asia-Pacific is still by far the most advanced region of the world when it comes to fiber to the premises deployment and adoption. Asian FTTP adoption is estimated at 40 million subscribers, compared with just eight million in North America and 3.5 million in Europe.
The Korea Communications Commission and KT have ambitions to upgrade to a national target of 1 Gbps connectivity. That's an important national goal, but such government-lead policies arguably are not replicable in other markets that must rely on normal supply and demand constraints.
In some "state-lead" markets, the advantage for incumbent operators is an easier business case. In Malaysia, the government has decided to co-finance a fifth of the cost of an urban deployment of FTTP. As you would expect, Telecom Malaysia customers are able to buy service that is quite attractive compared to what one would find in a market where such subsidies are not available, says Felton.
In Australia and New Zealand, deployment models involve heavy government intervention, both in funding and investment structure establishment.
The biggest anticipated growth of this second wave is China. The Chinese government itself is not directly involved in the FTTP push, but all of the competing Chinese telcos are state owned, which imposes different constraints on their investment decisions compared to private players.
The somewhat discouraging news is that, after 10 years, FTTH has not produced unambiguously new and lucrative applications. That doesn't mean such applications will not develop, but simply that a private market cost-benefit analysis might suggest it still isn't so smart to charge ahead with a robust FTTH program at all costs.
