Sweden and France Have World's Fastest Broadband

tuesday 6 march, 2007

There are now over one million fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers in Western Europe, according to new research by Informa Telecoms & Media.

FTTH is the speediest form of consumer broadband available, carrying Internet data over fiber-optic cable in the last mile of the connection.

Less than 2% of Western Europe's 79 million broadband subscribers currently get FTTH.

Over 27% of broadband subscribers in Sweden have the FTTH. The service there is provided mainly by utilities and local authorities, which offer third-party services (think Vonage) open network access. This is more attractive to subscribers than comparatively limited services from traditional telecom operators.

National telecom operators typically think that offering open access on a national level would be too expensive. France is the exception to this rule: France Telecom and domestic competitors Iliad and Neuf Cegetel have started introducing FTTH nationwide.

Source: eMarketer