The Fat Pipe Opportunity: Expanding Fiber Footprints
OECD also found that Japan continues to lead with 68.5 percent penetration, followed by South Korea with 62.8 percent.
As for Europe, the EU has become more aggressively in terms of next-gen networks and the digital apps and services that its members believe will generate trillions of dollars in value for their respective economies.
For example, the U.K.’s recent Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund intends to accelerate the move to 5G. Chancellor Philip Hammond announced last year £400 million funding for fiber broadband providers, and private investors have been called upon to match the government’s investment. Additionally, more than £1 billion wil be invested by 2020-21, including £740 million through the National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF), targeting full-fiber connections and future 5G communications.
Heavy Reading’s Graham Finnie had predicted that by 2019, 31 million new fiber connections would be in use in Europe, and according to the European Commission, 50 percent of Europeans will have access to 100 Mbps networking connections, with 30 Mbps being the bare minimum by 2019.
While Europe will see governments putting money into infrastructure, along with CSPs and private investors, it is primarily private investors in the United States that have poured over $1.4 trillion since 1996 into building commercial internet, mobile infrastructure and fiber connections, according to figures by U.S. Telecom.
Attempts to bring money into play have gotten both praise and criticism, as with the debate about the efficacy of the the National Broadband Plan (NBP) for infrastructure investment, as well as the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Regardless of the spectrum of opinions out there, it seems private investment in the broadband ecosystem has been strong, with private investment continuing to dominate.
Whether that will change remains to be seen. It seems Verizon, AT&T, and CenturyLink, and new entrants like Google Fiber, would probably be reluctant to express a “want” for government funding given the lobbying that went into Net Neutrality. As such, it seems government “interference” could be seen as a double-edged sword.
Regardless of who funds infrastructure improvement, the move from copper/coax hybrid networks will continue, and more businesses and consumers will gain access to faster, more durable fiber, which some industry pundits believe could reach speeds 20x faster than today’s best wired and wireless connections. That type of speed will open the door to new applications, new innovations and perhaps new industries in the march toward 5G. That will have enormous impact on global GDP, although, Harvard Business Review says it is time to reevaluate GDP as a measure of the value delivered to all of us in the digital age. It notes the extraordinary value of networks, digital assets of infinite use and reuse, and the enormity of new gig employment opportunities, not to mention the data and insights that will affect the quality of our lives as individuals.
And for businesses, the digital evolution will mean continued gains in performance and reliability, cost, customer service, communications capabilities, collaboration, billing and other areas relevant to customer experience. As they do so, CSPs will continue to build scale and agility in their network operations, as well as continue opening up their computing, storage and networking capabilities to enterprise customers and partners through as-a-service, pay-as-you-grow models that leverage APIs and tighter integration with enterprise business applications and workflows.
