Fibre-to-the-home rollout ramps up in Canada

The average Canadian is currently less likely to have access to the fast Internet speeds offered by fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology than the average American, but Canada is catching up. The companies building FTTH networks in Canada are now doing so faster than their U.S. counterparts, according to Heather Burnett Gold, president of the Fiber-to-the-Home Council North America. “The growth in Canada has been quite strong, passing more new households per capita than the U.S. from 2010 to 2013,” she said. As of Sept. 30, in Canada, FTTH had passed 1.7 million homes and was connected to half a million premises, she said, meaning 3.7 per cent of Canadians are currently connected to FTTH service. “That puts in the top 20 countries in the world,” she said. “ to be catching up and going faster in terms of percentages than the U.S.,” Gold added. The 1.7 million of homes passed means that currently just less than 13 per cent of Canadians have the option to obtain FTTH service. Fibre-to-the home builds extend fibre lines all the way to customers' homes, as opposed to fibre-to-the-node technology, where the “last-mile” connections are completed through slower, copper wires. Gold said that prior to 2010, “Canada was slow to initiate FTTH compared to what was going on in the U.S.” In 2010, mid-size incumbent local exchange carriers like Bell Aliant Inc. (in which BCE Inc. has 44 per cent stake) began building FTTH networks in response to losing market share to cable companies, Gold said, and now, “the other major incumbents are at least trialing it, starting to pick their communities and work on when they’re going to deploy it.” “Even if it’s not as extensive as Bell Aliant, at least they’re all thinking about it,” she said, noting that “is a much stronger response than we’ve had in the U.S.” While fewer Canadians are connected — 3.7 per cent as compared to 8.5 per cent in the U.S. — Gold said “it looks like you’re doing it faster because you’re having more interest from the mid-size and large incumbents. We’re just starting to see that interest outside of Verizon in the U.S.” Though others are also getting into the game, Bell Aliant, the second-largest provider of FTTH in North America after Verizon, still accounts for a large proportion of those homes in Canada. Its FibreOP network passes “more than 770,000 homes and businesses” in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, and the company plans to expand that figure to one million premises, company spokeswoman Katherine VanBuskirk said in an emailed statement. She said Bell Aliant has been building its network in both urban and rural areas, and in both existing and new communities. It has been doing so primarily through aerial infrastructure, noting that “although we have no plans at this time to extend the network to underground/buried cable, we continue to look at buried solutions for future consideration.” Telus Corp. spokesman Chris Gerritsen said in an emailed statement that Telus has deployed FTTH “in a number of areas, especially in new condo buildings, sub-divisions and business developments,” though he did not provide any figures about how many homes have been passed or connected. “We continue to build with fibre as we expand and enhance our Internet and Optik TV offerings throughout B.C., Alberta and Quebec,” he said. Rogers Communications Inc. is “implementing a first market rollout of fibre to the home in select regions in Toronto and Atlantic Canada,” spokeswoman Jennifer Kett said in an emailed statement, though she did not specify how many customers the service is available to. She added that the company has “provided fibre to the home to older neighborhoods as well as new, and aerial and non-aerial.” In Manitoba, Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. has passed more than 30,000 homes using both buried and aerial infrastructure, and is building in both existing neighbourhoods and new developments, spokeswoman Chelsea Ross said in an email. SaskTel did not provide a response to questions for this story, but its 2012 annual report states it passed 41,705 homes with its fibre-to-the-premises infiNET network in that year. Shaw Communications Inc. also did not provide comment, though in a filing the company made with the CRTC last month, it said it has “limited Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) deployment in some regions.” Cogeco Cable Inc., which did not return a request for comment, said in its 2013 annual report that it is “deploying FTTH systems in new residential developments which meet specific criteria of size, proximity to the existing plan and service penetration rate.” Additionally, in various areas the technology is also being deployed by smaller providers, such as small ISP Vianet Internet Solutions, which built its own fibre-to-the-home lines in Sudbury and Chapleau, Ont. Shawn Olmstead, Bell’s vice-president of residential product management, said wiring 90 per cent of Quebec City to be able to receive fibre-to-the-home has been the company’s biggest project so far, though he did not provide a specific number of homes passed. “We’ve been rolling out FTTH for the last couple of years. It’s primarily focused in Quebec,” he said. “It is friendlier in an aerial environment.” He said Bell is also building FTTH in new subdivisions and condominiums in Ontario and Quebec, such as in the greater Montreal and Toronto areas, as well as sections of Ottawa and Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. Olmstead added Bell has also been building in existing neighbourhoods where it’s economically feasible, which is often the case in areas with aerial infrastructure. “It really comes down to the economics of leveraging the existing copper we’ve already put there versus putting in new FTTH-type infrastructure,” he said. “FTTH is a technology that we love, and where it’s cost-effective, we’ve made that decision to deploy it.” The Wire Report reported last year that factors like demographics, competition and aerial space are key to the economics of a fibre rollout. Olmsted said the technology is “future-proof.” “It’s really infinite in what you can achieve or what you can do. You’ve taken this distance limitation out of the equation, and you’ve really just literally shortened it so you can deliver any kind of speed or service that you want at light speed. It really is light speed, both figuratively and actually,” Olmstead said. Gold, of the FTTH Council, agreed that the benefit of FTTH is that “once it’s there, it’s there. You can increase speeds. It has much lower maintenance fees. It’s limitless, virtually limitless.” While Bell’s Olmsted added fibre-to-the-home is “where everybody wants to go in the industry, no matter where they are,” Gold said she wasn’t sure whether FTTH would ever reach 100 per cent penetration. She noted that of the top five FTTH countries in terms of homes connected, one, the United Arab Emirates, has 100 per cent penetration, while the runner-up, Japan, is at 32 per cent and South Korea is at 27 per cent, followed by Singapore at 18 per cent and Norway at 17 per cent. FTTH will become the pervasive technology, though, because as more companies build FTTH networks, the competition is going to want to get into the game as well, she said. “And so eventually, there will be this virtuous cycle, where you just wouldn’t not have it because it would preclude you from so many things that other communities have,” she said. She said that in the U.S., the entrance of companies like Google Inc. (which offers FTTH service in Kansas City) has spurred “fibre envy.” “We’ve had more and more communities say, ‘Why I can’t I have it?’ ” she said. “So that’s building on itself.” Gold said she doesn't know if that same "surge" in demand will happen in Canada, "unless you have someone like a Canadian Google step in and start building.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Fibre-to-the-home rollout ramps up in Canada

News | January 15, 2014

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