Gigabit-labeled services are expected to have at least 100 million subscribers by 2020, according to Oliver Johnson, CEO of fixed broadband analyst firm Point Topic. Speaking at the Broadband Forum, Johnson said many major markets are expected to adopt gigabit services over the next five years, with coverage in some mature markets possibly approaching 50 percent.
Nearly 70 percent of gigabit service growth, Johnson said, is expected to come from the Asia-Pacific region.
“The rate of growth predicted by Point Topic’s latest figures shows the scale of the issue the broadband industry is facing and why adopting key enabling technologies for ultra-fast access is so important,” Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh said. “The growing trend of gigabit services points to the fact that more and more people want to use next-generation services, like 4K video, location-based services, security, home automation, video sharing, gaming and home office collaboration. G.fast is how operators with copper in their networks can still enable all these things.”
Earlier this month, Huawei and Tele Danmark Communications (TDC) announced they are teaming up to upgrade TDC’s coaxial network in Denmark, making it the first country in the world to upgrade an entire cable network to “Giga coax.” Competition in the U.S. also is fierce, with the rollouts of Google Fiber, AT&T’s GigaPower, Comcast’s DOCSIS 3.1-powered gigabit Internet service and Midco’s gigabit service expected to continue through 2016 and beyond.
