Cabling, Connectivity and EMEA's FTTx Challenge

The past few years have seen an explosion in home data consumption across EMEA, and the growth shows no signs of slowing. According to industry analyst firm Arthur D. Little, data use per household, which was approximately 225 GB/month in 2022, is expected to grow to about 900 GB/month by 2030—an annual growth rate of 20%[i].

There are multiple drivers of this growth. Among the most impactful is the increase in video streaming. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, an estimated 78% of European households subscribe to at least one streaming service, with 45% having three or more subscriptions and 14% subscribing to five or more services[ii]. Another major contributor is the rapid increase in home Wi-Fi adoption. Between 2023 and 2024, home Wi-Fi usage increased 53%, as the average number of in-home Wi-Fi devices rose to 12[iii]. 

Discover how to overcome EMEA's FTTx Challenge.

Increasing demand for FTTH/B will strain fiber supplies

Explosive growth in home data consumption is driving service providers throughout EMEA to expand and accelerate their fiber to the home/building (FTTH/B) rollouts. That’s not to suggest, however, that fiber deployment across the region is lagging. Based on figures from the FTTH Council Europe, fiber passes approximately 70% of homes across Europe; by 2029, coverage is expected to at 87%[iv]. With take-up rates hovering at 50%, 121 million homes were connected as of September 2023.

The concern for operators, however, is that demand is still outstripping supply, especially in the outlying areas where the urban/rural digital gap is the widest. Overall, 64% of European households (EU27+UK) are covered by FTTH/B networks. That number shrinks to 48% in rural areas. While rural numbers are increasing year over year, so is the disparity between rural and urban markets. The current 16-point gap is approximately 14% higher than in 2022. There is much work to be done.

A major concern among telcos and cable operators is whether there will be enough fiber-optic cable to meet their ambitious buildouts. By 2030, global 5G penetration is anticipated to reach over 56%, more than triple the penetration in 2023[v]. Getting there will require building a denser and more extensive fiber infrastructure to support a ubiquitous small cell layer.

While the global fiber-optic cable market is expected to grow at a steady 13.24% (CAGR) over the next five years[vi], FTTH network operators won’t be the only industry segment competing for the available fiber cabling. Fiber demand is surging with the growth of AI, smart cities and IoT/IIoT deployments across enterprises and industrial sectors. AI in particular is expected to drive heavy demand. As the number and size of GPU clusters increase, the density of the horizontal fibers feeding them is anticipated to rise by as much as 500%.[vii] This will also trigger similar densification in the backbone network to support the rapid growth of horizontal cabling.

Given these trends there is a very real risk of fiber demand outstripping supply. In the U.S., for example, the demand for new cabling, which was 91.3 million f-km (fiber kilometers) in 2022, is expected to grow by more than 30%, reaching 127 million f-km by 2025.[viii] Unless U.S. fiber manufacturers take significant steps to increase fiber cabling production, demand may exceed supply by as much as 47%[vii]. This will affect FTTH deployments across Europe as well as the U.S.

Fiber OEMs double down on increasing capacity

Led by major fiber OEMs, including CommScope, the industry has begun to ramp up capacity. As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of fiber-optic cabling, CommScope produces over 380 million meters of fiber.

In July 2023, the company announced a $60.3 million investment to expand fiber production at its two North American manufacturing facilities located in North Carolina. The expansions will allow CommScope to produce more loose tubes as well as additional fiber cable counts and styles. 

“This increase in fiber-optic cable production is a great step forward for our ‘Broadband for Everyone’ program, furthering our commitment to serve the fiber-optic cable market,” according to CommScope president and CEO, Chuck Treadway.

The announcement came several months after CommScope announced a $47 million investment to expand fiber cable production at its Catawba, North Carolina, facility, the world’s largest hybrid-fiber-coaxial facility for broadband networks. In addition to expanding production of its hybrid fiber/coaxial products, the new capacity will support production of CommScope’s new HeliARC™ family of fiber solutions, optimized for rural FTTH/B deployments.

The company’s fiber capacity expansions will help ensure that Europe’s FTTH/B network operators have access to the volume of fiber cabling needed to pursue their aggressive buildout schedules. But fiber rollout across Europe is just one of several major challenges facing operators. According to financial services analyst company ING Bank: “The other key challenges for European telecoms now will be increasing the take-up rate and maximizing the return on investments.”[ix]  

New fiber cabling designs help networks achieve FTTH/B objectives

The deployment of high-speed broadband via FTTH networks creates a tremendous opportunity for service providers across Europe and throughout the world. To seize it, operators must achieve four primary objectives: 

• Accelerate fiber rollouts
• Reduce fiber deployment costs
• Improve FTTH network reliability
• Minimize the network’s carbon footprint

Each of these objectives has implications on the technology choices service providers make and the approaches they take when it comes to fiber connectivity. While last mile FTTH/B deployments pose the most challenges and receive the majority of attention, fiber to the node, the cabinet and curb must be considered as well.

Led by OEMs like CommScope, the industry continues to develop innovative solutions to help service providers address their FTTx issues.

Smaller, lighter fiber cabling

In urban and suburban areas, microducting has become a key technology for expediting the rollout of FTTH/B services, but it is not without its challenges. The narrower the ducts, the fewer fibers it can hold. This limits the number of fibers that can be blown at a time, as well as the amount of dark fiber that can be deployed. Increasing fiber density in the microduct cabling is key to solving this issue.

Using advanced design and materials management, CommScope cabling portfolio supports fiber cores with ultra-thin coatings of 200 um or less, 46% smaller than standard fiber cable construction. While the overall diameter is smaller, the fiber core and cladding remain the same, ensuring no compromise in optical performance. The design enables higher density fiber bundles (24+ fibers/bundle).

In rural settings where aerial deployments are more common, cable size and weight are potential obstacles to accelerated FTTx deployments. CommScope’s recently introduced HeliARC™ fiber cable is a slimmer, stronger solution that supports longer aerial spans with lower tension. This makes it ideal for rural FTTH networks.

Both solutions are produced by reducing the amount of processing and physical material in the fiber and cabling. Lowering the amount of material used also reduces the waste stream and energy requirements. The smaller, lighter solutions also enable more cabling to be loaded on to the reel—decreasing the number of reels needed. As a result, service providers can improve the sustainability profile of their networks without sacrificing performance.

Untangling fiber nests in the terminals

Historically, most networks across Europe, the Middle East and Africa were built using manual splicing as the dominant connectivity method. As a result, each new home added to the network required a skilled technician to open a fiber terminal and perform a splice.

Today, after years of manual splicing, many, if not most, terminal boxes are packed full of inconsistently spliced and poorly managed fiber that impedes technicians’ ability to activate new subscribers, perform repairs, and maintain the network.

Precabled fiber terminals are one of the best ways to help minimize the need for manual splicing in aerial applications. With these solutions, critical fiber splices are made in a controlled factory environment and sealed tightly inside the terminal. The fiber cables that extend from the terminal are then routed to subscriber homes or other network locations as needed, typically without requiring technicians to open the box at all.

In one example, a network operator was able to save 170 euros per aerial node by replacing mid-span pass-through cabled terminals with terminals with pre-tailed cables. When projected over a network of 100,000 homes, the savings totaled 3 million euros.

Provisioning Day 2 subscribers

The bottleneck in any FTTH deployment is the final few meters from the subscriber’s property boundary to the ONT. Micro-trenching around gardens and under walkways is time intensive for the installer, expensive for the operator and disruptive for the homeowner. With fiber take rates of about 45% in the U.S.[x] and 50% in Europe[xi], blowing fiber to every home severely compromises Day 1 deployment schedules.  

One solution is to create an intermediate transition at the property boundary using a mini junction unit (MJU) inside a boundary. The microduct and fiber terminate in the MJU; when the homeowner chooses to subscribe, the drop fiber is connected and routed to the ONT inside the house.

The challenge, however, is successfully blowing the microduct and fiber into the toby box (also known as “inspection pit” or “access chamber”). Cables are prone to bunching inside the conduit, typically caused by an outer jacket with a high co-efficient of friction and/or unbalanced axial stiffness along the cable. 

Engineers at CommScope have developed micro-blowable cables that enable average blowing speeds of 80 m/min over distances up to 1,250 meters, without blowing issues or damage to the fibers. The design uses a lightweight but tough outer jacket (polyamide or HDPE) that significantly reduces friction and provides balanced axial stiffness through straightaways and bends, without nesting. As a result, the micro-blowable cables enable operators to offset some of the unnecessary costs of running fiber either to the MJU or directly to the home/building.     

Investing in the FTTx supply chain

Continued innovation, such as those described above, will be necessary if network operators are to overcome evolving FTTx challenges in the long term. Meanwhile, day-to-day progress depends on a reliable and diverse supply of fiber, PON components, cabinets and closures, etc. This is where the manufacturing, distribution and field service capabilities of a strong global provider become indispensable.

CommScope’s FTTx fiber cable and connectivity portfolio is among the industry’s largest. It addresses virtually every indoor and outdoor application, environment and deployment type— façade, aerial, underground and central office—and includes singlemode and multimode fiber platforms, complete PON/G-PON solutions, and RFoG cabling. Outdoor fiber cabling solutions include stranded and central loose tube cables, air-blown fiber, self-supporting cables (dielectric, glass-reinforced and corrugated steel) and dry or gel-filled tubes.

Moreover, CommScope is also a leading provider of fiber connectivity solutions. In the central office/headend, we provide optical distribution frames, plug-and-play splitters and modular fiber raceway systems; our outside plant solutions feature hardened and non-hardened trunk, feeder and distribution closures; and splice and patch terminals with pre-cabled and pre-terminated options. We also supply building entrance boxes and fiber termination boxes for customer premises and MDU deployments.  

As FTTx transport technologies continue to evolve and diversify, ensuring continuity of end-to-end optical performance will become more challenging. CommScope’s standardized global manufacturing, assembly and testing processes help ensure compatibility from the head-end/central office to the distribution node to the street cabinet and the home/building.  

Today’s FTTx decisions will define tomorrow’s network success

In a May 2023 report on the European FTTx market[xii], Analysis Mason noted that “even current full-fiber networks, including 10 Gbit/s-capable networks that are fast becoming the norm in ongoing deployments, will remain capable of delivering very high speeds with no material congestion until well after 2030.” In other words, by investing in the right deployment strategies and FTTx solutions today, service providers can create a buffer against changes in technology, demographics and market dynamics.

Meanwhile, industry and political leaders across the EU are looking to increase FTTx momentum through region-wide initiatives like Connectivity for a European Gigabit Society by 2025 and the Digital Decade. If successful, these strategic programs would result in uninterrupted 5G coverage for all urban areas and major terrestrial transport paths and access to at least 100 Mbps fiber connectivity for all European households by 2025; the vision by 2030 is to connect every European household to a gigabit network and provide 100% 5G coverage across all populated areas.[xiii]

As a global leader in broadband network infrastructure, CommScope can help you identify and implement the FTTx approaches that will give your network the best chance of long-term success. For more than 40 years, we’ve partnered with broadband providers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa—sharing our insights, collaborating on network designs and providing future-ready solutions and guidance. Rely on CommScope to help you grow from here to there.

Click here for more information on how CommScope’s FTTx insights and solutions can help you address your core FTTx challenges.