Fiber will play a key role in 5G development

CommScope recently said that in the future of broadband development, network convergence will adopt fiber on a large scale. Previously, CommScope co-sponsored Telecoms.com Intelligence's "Broadband Outlook 2016" survey, the results of which showed that fiber will play a key role in the development of 5G and the network speed of all FTTH deployments.

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“In the future, fiber will go deeper into the network to meet the growing demand for bandwidth,” said Dieter Verdegem, vice president of FTTx access solutions at CommScope. “When 90% of respondents believe that multi-system operators will merge fiber networks for 5G to cover FTTH and fiber backhaul, the significance is impossible to ignore.”

The 600 respondents from around the world who participated in the survey included service providers and vendors, as well as consultants, analysts and enterprise network customers. Other key findings from the Broadband Outlook 2016 report include:

• 91% of respondents agree that the availability of dense fiber optic networks is very important in the development of 5G.
• 79% of respondents agree that fiber optic technology brings or will bring brand and image benefits to their services and products.
• 45% of respondents expect that by 2020, the majority of network users will have migrated to FTTH, and by 2025, the proportion of users who have achieved this migration will reach 71%.

According to the report, 2020 is "heralded as the year when everything in the world gets better," although some operators want to bring that date forward. The report also states that "the worlds of fixed and wireless appear to be on a collision course, and operators are working hard to sort out the chaos."

Telecoms.com Intelligence released the findings at the Broadband World Forum telecoms conference in London this week.

"We are delighted by the positive feedback and support for the Broadband Outlook Survey from the industry, which represents a very important group of the industry," said Tom Skinner, head of information at Telecoms.com. "The results of the survey show that the next generation of access technologies will rely heavily on fiber-intensive infrastructure, especially as we get closer to 5G and anticipate the rich content that 5G will provide."