Broadband demand drives possibilities in FttH

FttH - or fibre to the home - is one potential way of delivering faster broadband to domestic customers.

A new report from Research and Markets notes the possible development of the technology, which could help to overcome the "last mile" phenomenon by which high core broadband speeds turn into slow access rates.

This is usually due to contention rates as many end-users connect to the same exchange, or attenuation over the cabling that carries the signal to a property located far from its local exchange.

Fibre to the home, however, could ultimately help to eliminate this attenuation, with faster data transfer rates for domestic and home office customers.

"In 2011 there will be around 1.9 billion households with internet access and nearly 37 per cent of these will have access to fixed broadband," the analyst predicts.

The European market in particular is said to have evolved significantly in the past 12 months, with the movement from copper cable to fibre optics in core networks helping to drive this change.