We increasingly see deployment of applications and services provisioned by underlying gigabit broadband. This is enabling people, machines, and applications to collaborate effectively and intelligently in order to enhance quality of life, improve our mobility, grow our economies and empower our decision-making.

Fiber optic broadband infrastructure continues to be deployed throughout the world - there are 20+ markets with at least 50% fiber coverage, and 8+ markets with more than 90% fiber coverage. We see an even bigger jump in take-up of fiber driven by effective migration of legacy technology customers to fiber and competition driving demand for high-speed broadband.

Increasing availability of fiber based broadband in turn is driving the take-up of other innovative services such as gigabit speed broadband to the home, 4K TV, increased share of triple/ quadruple play services and use of high end gigabit routers. The recent PyeongChang Olympics 2018 and FIFA World Cup 2018 for the first time saw large scale availability of 4K live sports content broadcast in more than 30+ countries.

We expect fiber rollout to continue to expand to more markets as non-telco operators like utilities, municipalities, private equity firms are also now investing into fiber infrastructure. Fiber take-up will continue to increase driven by effective migrations as well as competition for higher speeds creating demand for new innovative services like gigabit broadband, 4K TV and others.

Gigabit broadband is here

In this 4th edition of our report, we observe that applications enabled by gigabit broadband speeds are becoming buzzwords. In this scenario, people, machines, and applications collaborate effectively and intelligently in order to enhance quality of life, improve our mobility, grow our economies and empower our decision-making. For further details on how gigabit broadband enables use cases in a “gigaworld” society, see our reports, “Creating a gigabit society”1 and “Unlocking Gigaworld innovation”2 .

Gigabit broadband can be delivered using cable DOCSIS, fiber or other 5G-based technologies. In this report we focus on the rollout, take-up and services delivered with fiber3 -based gigabit broadband networks. We especially focus on the developments made in fiber take-up and gigabit services enabled by fiber. See the previous edition of this study, “Race to gigabit fiber: Telecom incumbents pick up pace”4 for further details on which markets are taking the lead on fiber rollout and the deployment models used for it.