Gigabit PON Spending Climbs 44 Percent YoY in First Quarter 2014

CAMPBELL, CA — Compared to the year-ago quarter, GPON equipment revenue is up a solid 44 percent in the first quarter of 2014, a result of continued fiber-to-the-home spending in China and EMEA, according to market research firm Infonetics Research in its most recent "PON, FTTH, and DSL Aggregation Equipment and Subscribers" report.

"While the first quarter is typically the slowest of the year in North America, and this one was no different, it's a good sign that the 10 percent revenue boost we saw in 2013 is carrying over into this year," notes Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research. "AT&T, CenturyLink, Windstream, and tier 3 operators all have dedicated plans in place to expand their VDSL and GPON deployments in an effort to keep pace with cable DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts and fiber offerings from upstarts like Google."

Broadband Market Highlights
The global broadband aggregation equipment market (DSL, PON, and Ethernet FTTH) is down 5 percent in 1Q14 from 4Q13, but up a healthy 23 percent year-over-year, totaling $1.89 billion

• The only equipment category that grew sequentially in 1Q14 is PON (+0.1 percent)


• Despite a slow 1st quarter, EMEA continues to reap major vectored VDSL2 projects at KPN, Belgacom, Turk Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom, among others, and see a ramp in FTTH spending in Russia and the Middle East


• In China, meanwhile, China Telecom and China Unicom are slowing their FTTH investments to focus on LTE rollouts, while China Mobile picks up the slack, expanding the China Tietong fixed broadband network it inherited in 2008


• #2 Alcatel-Lucent finished 1Q14 only around $1 million behind top dog Huawei