HICKORY, NC — Fiber will play a crucial role in the development of 5G, as well as network speed in all FTTH deployments, according to CommScope, a global provider of fiber optic connectivity, in its recent “Broadband Outlook 2016” survey.

“Fiber will inevitably be pushed further into the network in order to respond to the ever-growing demand for bandwidth,” said Dieter Verdegem, vice president of FTTx Access Solutions at CommScope. “It’s impossible to ignore when 90 percent of people who answered the survey believe that multi-play operators will merge their fiber networks to cover both FTTH and fiber backhaul for 5G.”

The 600 respondents from around the globe who completed the survey are made up of representatives from service providers and vendors in addition to consultants, analysts and enterprise customers. Among other significant findings in the “Broadband Outlook 2016” report:

  • 91 percent of respondents agree that the availability of a dense fiber network is very important in the development of 5G.

  • 79 percent of respondents agree that fiber technology brings, or will bring, benefits in terms of branding/image to their service offering.

  • 45 percent of respondents expect to transition the majority of their network users to FTTH by 2020, and 71 percent by 2025.

According to the report, 2020 is being “heralded as the year when everything in the world will change for the better,” although some operators wish to push up that date. The report goes on to say that the “worlds of fixed and wireless networking appear to be colliding, and operators are ideally positioned to make sense of the chaos.”

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