Telefonica Brazil passes AT&T, Verizon with 16M FTTH homes passed
Enrique Blanco, Telefonica CTO, is telecom's strongest believer in fiber. His Brazilian operation has now passed 16 million homes, almost a quarter of the country. The goal is 24 million in a few years. Only 3 million have purchased so far, but fiber generally catches 40% of broadband after a few years.
FTTH revenues were up 56% year-over-year, while IPTV was up 26.9% resulting in a combined growth of 47.3%. Analyst Carlos Sequeira noted, "The FTTH operation is growing super fast. Net additions are impressive. So everything is going super well." He went on to ask if Vivo could even speed up the construction.
This is part of a worldwide trend of adding fiber. In the US, Frontier is building again and talks of 3 million as it exits bankruptcy. BT is passing ~2M homes/year, up from almost nothing three years ago. Orange has just announced it's "accelerating fiber." It has 22 million connections available, most shared with Free. That's over 60% of the country.
Two years ago, almost no one expected this kind of growth. I didn't.