FTTH Council: 74% of FTTH customers are satisfied with speed, service

Broadband customers that reside in an area where Fiber to the Home (FTTH)-based service is available are, not surprisingly, satisfied with the speed and service they get from their service provider.

According to the FTTH Council's new survey of 2,000 FTTH users, conducted in conjunction with RVA LLC, customer satisfaction rose to 74 percent, up from 71 percent in 2010. Alternatively, only 54 percent of cable modem and 51 percent of DSL users said they were satisfied with their service.

Price, of course, is another factor of the customer satisfaction measurement. RVA revealed that FTTH subscribers paid on average $2.91 a month per Mbps of bandwidth versus $3.83 for cable subscribers and $16.40 for DSL.

Driven by U.S.-based (Verizon and SureWest) and Canadian (Bell Aliant) service providers, FTTH service was available to 18 percent of North American homes and more than seven million Americans had a FTTH connection in their home. Out of this demographic, 170,000 of these homes were using a 100 Mbps service, while 347,000 received 50 Mbps service.

Outside of the incumbent service providers, competitive service providers Sonic.net, Google's community FTTH initiative, and Chattanooga-based EPB are delivering 1 Gbps service in select communities.

In addition to leveraging the FTTH for video streaming and gaming, FTTH is becoming popular with telecommuters, with FTTH subscribers working an average 1.2 days per month more from their homes than cable subs.

While the RVA numbers reveal that consumer will use their FTTH pipes and that the hunger for more bandwidth will continue to rise--especially with the rise of all-you-can-eat video streaming services from the likes of Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) and other over-the-top (OTT) players--the near-term reality is that FTTH in North America is far from ubiquitous.

For more:
- see the release

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