Fiberglass industry: the entire EU can be supplied with fiber for 137 billion euros

The FTTH Council Europe, an interest group of 150 European companies, calculates that it will cost 137 billion euros to provide all 28 EU member states with full fiber optic coverage. That amount is considerably lower than the European Commission itself estimates.

The amount of €137 billion revealed by the FTTH Council Europe research would be needed to reach the target of 100 percent coverage in the EU by 2025. This concerns 100 percent coverage with regard to ‘homes passed’, which means that fiber optics are located along streets to which houses can in principle be connected. By 2025, half of all houses in the Member States should actually have a fiber connection. At the moment, according to the advocate, those numbers would be 36 percent passed and 10 percent connected.

The FTTH Council Europe basically outlines three scenarios. A complete reconstruction of the fiber optic infrastructure would require 210 billion euros, and for only an expansion to areas where there is currently no fiber optic, the amount comes to 156 billion euros. The cheapest option of 137 billion takes into account cost savings in the area of ​​reuse of infrastructure. Incidentally, there is the nuance that only half of the 5 percent of the most remote homes can be connected.

The FTTH Council Europe consists of 150 European companies such as BAM Infra, Arris, 3M, Ericsson, GE and Huawei. The advocacy group claims that alternative studies with higher amounts are opaque and falsely claim that the EU’s goal for broad fiber coverage is not achievable. The organization also believes that the arrival of 5G should not be an obstacle to achieving the target, because of the dependence of mobile networks on the fixed network.