Big Three extend FTTH coverage to 704m Chinese homes

The China Academy of Telecommunication Research (CAICT), part of state regulator the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s (MIIT’s) research arm, has published its analysis of the county’s broadband development, revealing that fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) coverage was close to 90% in cities in most provinces, with some, such as Tianjin and Jiangsu, reaching nearly 100%. By the end of May 2016, a strong focus on network rollouts from the big three – China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile, via its CM TieTong division – had seen FTTH networks reach some 704 million households nationwide. The expansion has not been solely focused on the cities, however, and FTTH systems have been deployed to more than 80% of administrative villages, enabling over 50% of connections in those areas to utilise speeds of 12Mbps or more. The CAICT expects the country to see more than 100 million net new FTTH subscribers in 2016, with FTTH accounting for around 80% of connections by that date.