FTTH shipments

According to Dittberner, worldwide FTTH shipments increased 22% quarter-over-quarter and 180% from the same quarter last year, to 925,000 new subscribers, of which almost 82% in Japan. The technology split is 75% for GPON-EPON and 25% for BPON. In 1Q06, leading vendors were Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Hitachi, UTStarcom, and Tellabs. Japan is on target to add 3m FTTH subscribers this year and plans to continue until 30 million homes are connected. The US market is led by Verizon, which is not slowing down its deployment of BPON products. AT&T and BellSouth would follow Verizon' s lead and deploy more FTTH while cutting back on their ambitious DSL upgrade plans. In Europe, few cities (Amsterdam, Paris, ) have begun a number of public/private FTTH network efforts, but the position of large operators is still a question mark.