2014/05/23 Gigabit PON spending climbs 44% YoY in 1Q14; Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent neck-and-neck

 Campbell, CALIFORNIA, May 22, 2014—Market research firm Infonetics Research released vendor market share and preliminary analysis from its 1st quarter 2014 (1Q14) PON, FTTH, and DSL Aggregation Equipment and Subscribers report. (Full report published by May 30.)

ANALYST NOTE

“Compared to the year-ago quarter, GPON equipment revenue is up a solid 44% in the first quarter of 2014, a result of continued fiber-to-the-home spending in China and EMEA,” notes Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research.

“And while the first quarter is typically the slowest of the year in North America, and this one was no different, it’s a good sign that the 10% revenue boost we saw in 2013 is carrying over into this year,” continues Heynen. “AT&T, CenturyLink, Windstream, and tier 3 operators all have dedicated plans in place to expand their VDSL and GPON deployments in an effort to keep pace with cable DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts and fiber offerings from upstarts like Google.”

BROADBAND MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

• The global broadband aggregation equipment market (DSL, PON, and Ethernet FTTH) is down 5% in 1Q14 from 4Q13, but up a healthy 23% year-over-year, totaling $1.89 billion
• The only equipment category that grew sequentially in 1Q14 is PON (+0.1%)
• Despite a slow 1st quarter, EMEA continues to reap major vectored VDSL2 projects at KPN, Belgacom, Turk Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom, among others, and see a ramp in FTTH spending in Russia and the Middle East
• In China, meanwhile, China Telecom and China Unicom are slowing their FTTH investments to focus on LTE rollouts, while China Mobile picks up the slack, expanding the China Tietong fixed broadband network it inherited in 2008
• #2 Alcatel-Lucent finished 1Q14 only around $1 million behind top dog Huawei

Source: Infonetics Research