Ohad Hammer

Ikanos Communications: How Big is The VDSL Market? (Part IV)

Thanks.
How aggressive are they on the FTTN front?

Ikanos Communications: How Big is the VDSL Market? (Part III)

Hi Peter
BT’s access strategy is quite weird, in my humble opinion.
They are willing to deploy FTTH in greenfield settings, but basically it’s either pure FTTH or ADSL2+. I cannot think about another carrier in that scale that thinks that 10-25 megs are going to be enough. I guess the data you brought is a good explanation for that. Nevertheless, they should either get the remote terminals closer to end customers or go fiber all the way.
Why are they spending so much money on their core network anyway, when the bottlenecks might develop on the access side is beyond me…

Ikanos Communications: How Big is The VDSL Market? (Part II)

Hi Andy

I think that VDSL is a transitional technology, however, the transition is going ot take quite a while...
According to estiamtes, the number of broadband subs in 2010-2011 is expected to top 500M, but only 10-15% of them will be FTTH. What will happen with all the other DSL subs (300+ million )? In addition, some of the FTTH users will actually be FTTB, like we've seen in Japan and like we're going to see in the US.

Regarding the comaprison of pure FTTH to FTTB+VDSL, it depends on who u ask. FTTH is definitely cheaper and easier to maintain, and bendable fiber will likely make it easier to deploy, but wiring every apartment in high risers directly to fiber doesn't seem like the ideal solution imho.
Actually, according to one research company, even in Japan with its high fiber penetration and competitive market, there was a trend towards VDSL in the 3rd Q:

"The dominant Japanese market continues to move towards a higher percentage of MDU subscribers, increasing the number of VDSL ports while reducing the number of FTTH ports."


lw.pennnet.com/display.../


Best,
Ohad