Latin America's drive for fibre 2022

Fibre Systems Spring 2022

FTTH in the America

Are fibre deployments on course to meet targets? Keely Portway finds out

Latin America continues to be a prolific market with very real possibilities of expansion for FTTH deployment. The pandemic has caused several challenges for the industry – financial, personal and service – but in Latin America it has also increased awareness of how vital it is to offer faster, more capable communication services to maintain the higher connectivity now demanded. Service providers and governments are finding new ways to support the growth of FTTH networks.  

The demand for bandwidth already seen in past years continues to increase, and, more than ever, operators and governments in the region are invested to improve services of fibre optic networks

Edna Preuss, director, industry affairs and member services at the Fiber Broadband Association’s LatAm Chapter, explained: ‘The demand for bandwidth already seen in past years continues to increase, and, more than ever, operators and governments in the region are invested to improve services of fibre optic networks. 
 
‘This is especially the case for those players with extensive copper networks which, in recent years, have been migrating to offer fibre optic services to their customers.’ An example of this commitment, said Preuss, is Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE). The service provider joined the chapter 10 years ago to learn about FTTH network deployments, and today it provides 80 per cent of FTTH installation in the country. 

Fibre future 
More than two years ago, the company decided not to invest in copper anymore. All new developments and investments would be towards fibre, with the understanding that fibre is the future-proof technology. According to Roberto Sanchez Pacheco, responsible for project planning and execution technology networks and services: ‘ICE is currently developing four major projects to connect urban and rural communities in the short and medium term, including a project – on which they won a public bid – to connect 5,500 education centres.’ 
 

 
Recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicates that from June 2019 to June 2020, Costa Rica enjoyed the third largest rise (62.2 per cent) in fibre optic network deployment, only behind Israel (99.8 per cent) and the United Kingdom (69.3 per cent). Fibre deployments in Chile grew by 37.6 per cent, ranking sixth on the list. Furthermore, the growth of connections is higher than the average for OECD countries, which reached 13.5 per cent in the period. 
 
According to the OECD report, the proportion of optics in Chile grew by 7.64 percentage points, reaching a market share of 32.8 per cent, which is only surpassed by France (7.85 points) and New Zealand (8.57 points). With this, the proportion of fixed internet access with FTTH has doubled in the last two years.