Making FTTH happen: the Danish experience

The deployment of Fiber To The Home (FTTH) in Denmark has accelerated over the previous years, and made Denmark one of the countries in Europe with the highest FTTH deployment rate. This development has been largely driven by the consumer-owned utilities and with almost no interference from government institutions and the incumbent operator, which makes the Danish FTTH evolution quite unique. In this paper we analyze the Danish FTTH deployment, and highlight some of the main drivers and challenges. A main conclusion is that FTTH can actually be deployed, even in rural areas. On the other hand the fast development in Denmark would probably not have happened without the special organization of electricity companies, and the traditions of these. In addition to technical challenges, ranging from system integration problems to handling of the physical fibers, it has been a significant challenge to actually attract customers: The development of speed and availability of xDSL solutions has increased the need for "killer" applications which take full advantage of the speeds offered by FTTH. The main contribution of this short paper is the analysis of the Danish FTTH experiences, which is valuable when developing technologies and services for FTTH, or when taking initiatives for supporting FTTH deployment in other countries.