FTTH Council Europe’s launches a slew of reports and resources at its flagship event in Amsterdam this week
Institutions lending money to fibre network builders are focusing their investments on homes ‘activated’ in an attempt to maximise returns. This is according to the FTTH Council Europe’s latest overview of fibre financing transactions in the March 2025 update of the Overview of fibre financing transactions in selected European Countries.*
The report says that after reaching “an all time high in 2022, the challenging market environment has led to FTTX financing markets experiencing less but stable activity over the past six months”.
“Companies involved in rolling out fibre networks across Europe remain strongly supported by the finance sector which continues to see the importance of FTTH and FTTX technologies,” noted the FTTH Council’s President, Roshene McCool (pictured). “Of course, increasing take-up is vital to generating revenue which is why the FTTH Conference 2025 has dedicated a session to exploring how the sector can better monetise their activities.”
Creating a truly open wholesale market
Also released ahead of the conference was a white paper from the FTTH Council Europe’s Open Access Working Group which set out five principles of am open access wholesale environment. They aim to define a ‘gold standard’ for open access as well as helping to foster a healthy and competitive market environment, independent of specific regional models or organisations.
“Over the past decade, billions of Euros of private investment has been channeled into building out fibre networks throughout Europe,” said FTTH Council’s Director General, Vincent Garnier. “To ensure these massive investments deliver for the end customer a fair and open competitive market is vital. We encourage stakeholders to consider the principles of Open Access as one potential approach to realising the benefits of a full-fibre approach.”
Optimising the last hop
In recognition of advances in home networking technologies such as Wi-Fi 7, Fibre to the Room (FTTR), Wi-Fi Mesh and containerisation, the Council released the third edition of the In-home Broadband Excellence (IBE) Guide. It covers three areas: how to extend fibre performance to the end device; how to manage the user experience; and how to add value and monetise it.
The Council’s goal is for the guide to become the standard reference for communication and internet service providers.
All in the planning
The Council’s Deployment and Operations committee released two white papers. The role of IT in accelerating FTTH Deployments and Operations covers IT solutions for challenges faced by operators in deploying and operating fibre networks and addresses FTTx pain points for the network at the plan, design, build and operate stages.
A case for end-to-end fixed access solution disaggregation explains the advantages of disaggregating solutions for end-to-end fixed access which is says is “a strategic shift from traditional vertically integrated, silo-based approaches to more open, standards-driven optical access networks”.
* It was produced by Macquarie on behalf of the Council and released at this week’s FTTH Conference 2025 in Amsterdam.
