In
2010, Vietnamese people talked much about the rise of broadband mobile service
3G and warned about the regression of ADSL-based Internet broadband services.
However, 3G has turned out to be not the biggest threat for ADSL, because a new
redoubtable rival has appeared: FTTH. Technology experts have warned that FTTH
services will grow very rapidly in 2011 and the next years. A lot of mobile
service providers have jumped into the attractive field.

The
Fiber to the X (FTTx) technology has the advantages of high and stable upload
and download speeds and will gradually replace ADSL to dominate the Internet
broadband market. FTTx includes four types, including FTTN (Fiber To The Node);
FTTC (Fiber To The Curb); FTTB (Fiber To The Building) and FTTH (Fiber To The
Home)

In Vietnam,
FPT Telecom is the first telecom company that provides FTTH services, followed
by the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group VNPT and Viettel. The latest
comer on the market is CMC Telecom Infrastructure belonging to CMC Technologies
Group. On April 10, 2010, CMC officially joined the market by providing optical
cable services with GigaNet brand.

Of
the current service providers, VNPT and its subsidiary VDC remains the
enterprise which is holding the biggest market share. The report released in
2010 by VDC showed that by July 2010, Vietnam had had seven FTTH service
providers, but the three giants VNPT, FPT and Viettel still have the highest
numbers of subscribers. They now have 57.63 percent, 25.12 percent and 13.42
percent of the total number of subscribers, respectively. The main clients of
the FTTH services are enterprises and institutions.

Since
it officially launched FiberVNN in May 2010, VDC has seen a considerable growth
rate in its market share. However, forecasts say that the current service
providers will have to share the market with another big name – CMC. Right at
the launching of the service, the enterprise announced that this will be the
strategic service of the company which will allow it to set foot on the
Vietnamese market. Therefore, CMC has heavily invested to develop the services.

CMC’s
high-speed fiber service GigaNet has a high speed of 2.5Gbps and it has big
advantages in using synchronous optical fiber from the service provider to the
computing labs of clients. Therefore, the transmission quality is stable, the
transmission line is not influenced by electromagnetic interference, bad
weather or cable length.

Most
recently, CMC has released the information that CMC TI, a subsidiary of the
group will invest tens of millions of dollars to develop fiber infrastructure
in all central provinces
and cities. Besides, CMC TI will also upgrade the infrastructure on the
national and international backbones in order to ensure bandwidth for
clients.

The
goal that CMC is striving for is that by the end of 2012, it will have the
total number of Internet broadband subscribers (FTTH + FTTB) exceeding 50,000
subscribers throughout the country. The strategy shows the firm determination
of the telecom service provider to conquer the Internet broadband market. In
previous years, experts believed that the Internet broadband market would fall
into the hands of VNPT/VDC, FPT and Viettel. Meanwhile, they have added CMC
into the list.

According
to experts, the biggest problem of FTTx service is that it has fees much higher
than ADSL. Therefore, to date, businesses remain the main clients of FTTx
services.

Currently,
users have to pay one million dong a month for normal FTTx, while the charges
could be 1.5-30 million dong for FTTH – GPON, depending on the speed.
Meanwhile, when using ADSL, households and individuals only have to pay 100,000
dong a month to access Internet.

However,
experts have predicted that in the near future, FTTx services will dominate the
market, and that high fees will not be a big problem for service users any
more, when service providers are trying to upgrade technologies and finding
ways to lower the production costs. If so, FTTx with the advantages in
technologies will be the choice of many Internet users.

The
experts also believe that the replacement of FTTx services is inevitable. With
the strong development of television services and digital content services
worldwide, FTTH will completely replace ADSL. In 2011 the replacement process is
already well underway.

Tuyet
Ngan