CORPORATE NEWS:
Optical fibre market grew 15% in 2005 says Corning
Fibre-to-the-home deployments are contin-uing to drive the world’s demand for fibre Eric Mr Musser, Vice President and General Manager of Corning Optical Fibre, told those gathered for the 25th annual Optical Fibre Briefing held in conjunction with the OFC/NFOEC conference in Anaheim, California, USA in early March.
Mr Musser said the total 2005 worldwide fibre market grew approximately 15% to 68 million kilometres compared to 2004’s market of about 58 million fibre kilometres. He attributed the growth to robust demand for broadband internet connections, in-cluding fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and added that North America and China were the two largest fibre markets and represented more than 50% of the world’s demand.
In a breakdown by region, Mr Musser observed that the North American market grew approximately 30% year-on-year driven primarily by the full-year impact of Verizon’s FiOS project, as well as additional deep-fibre deployments by other regional Bell operating companies. Another driver was the rural local exchange carriers’ continued steady build out of FTTH, primarily to add video capability to their communications networks.
Mr Musser said that China represented about 20% of worldwide demand and experienced 10% growth over 2004, which was driven by network investment at China Mobile.
He added that China has become one of the most price-challenged markets worldwide due to excess optical fibre manufacturing capacity and a centrally controlled tender process.
Western Europe, representing 15% of worldwide demand, increased by approximately 10% driven primarily by increased activity from the PTTs, who are upgrading their networks to keep pace with broadband demand. Japan, represen-ting 15% of worldwide demand, increased 15% following a 40% decrease in 2004. Mr Musser noted that this was driven by stronger demand from NTT for its FTTH network build and competitive FTTH network activity from power utility companies.
Other Asian markets – which grouped together represented 10% of worldwide demand – experienced moderate year-over-year growth primarily due to broadband deployments in South Korea and backbone and metro builds in India and Pakistan.
The ‘Rest of World’ segment, which comprised 5% of worldwide demand, was flat in 2005 compared to 2004. Mr Musser told the conference that in 2005 metro and access represented 85% of global fibre demand.
“Following growth of 20% in 2004 the access segment increased about 25% in 2005, greater than any other segment,” Mr Musser said. “Access now represents a full 50% of total worldwide demand and we believe it will continue to be the principal growth segment.”
Mr Musser observed that metro demand grew approximately 10% – the metro fibre segment in North America, Western Europe and China continued to grow as broadband subscribers increased and drove the need for more bandwidth.
The long-haul terrestrial/submarine segment accounted for 10% of the total worldwide demand and the segment was flat.
Mr Musser noted there were some limited extensions of existing long-haul networks in North America and Western Europe, but that long-haul demand continues to come from emerging markets such as Latin America, Russia and the Middle East.
Mr Musser said that the submarine segment saw solid growth in 2005, although off a very small base, as most fibre inventories were consumed in 2004.
The premises market, accounting for 5% of the total worldwide demand, grew by about 5%.
Mr Musser also briefly reviewed the 2005 results for Corning’s Telecommunications division, noting that Corning achieved most of its objectives in 2005 including continued improvements in financial performance. “The Telecommunications segment was profitable, it was a top cash contributor for Corning in 2005,” he said. “Sales increased year-on-year driven by growth in each of our businesses: optical fibre, cable and hardware and equipment.”
While addressing the Corning Tele-communications divison’s future plans, Mr Musser said the company will continue to focus in 2006 on financial performance and pursue the FTTx opportunity through innovation.
“Corning is unique in that we are positioned to optimize cost and performance across all three core elements of the passive plant with fibre, cable and hardware and equipment,”
Mr Musser added.
Corning continued its legacy of innovation by bringing over 20 new fibre, cable, hardware and equipment products to market in 2005.
Mr Musser added that the company delivered on its promise to develop a new bend-optimized optical fibre for the access segment. “This new fibre is one of the key enablers for products Corning is launching for FTTx applications,” Mr Musser said. “The company also developed a new coating for its optical fibre that is more bend tolerant, another critical feature in today’s networks and in new cable designs.”
Mr Musser also drew attention to the fact that Corning made a significant enhancement to LEAF optical fibre, the world’s most widely deployed non-zero dispersion-shifted fibre, by further improving the already industry leading polarization mode dispersion of the product. This improvement will enable networks to achieve ultra-high data rates.
Not content to rest on its laurels, Mr Musser said Corning is launching Vascade EX1000 fibre, a new ultra-low loss optical fibre for the submarine market that will enable longer reach and lower network costs. “Corning started the optical fibre industry
35-years ago with the invention of the first low-loss optical fibre for optical communi-cations,” he said. “Today we are launching a fibre with attenuation 100 times lower than that initial fibre.”
Company: |
Corning Inc |
Country: |
USA |
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+1 607 974 7549 |
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Website: |
www.corning.com/opticalfibre |