No sign of Britain, nor likely to be

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The FTTH Council has just released its rankings for FTTH Penetration. These rankings are issued twice a year, and track the level of market penetration in economies where more than one percent of households are connected directly into high speed fibre networks.

Whereas in Britain, the likes of Virgin can get away with calling their connectivity "fibre", the Council make no bones about calling FTTC and FTTN (Fibre to the node) connections 'copper-based broadband access technologies'. Ergo there is absolutely no sign of Britain in these rankings, which now include 20 economies (up from 14 in July 2008 and 11 in July 2007). There is no indication either when Britain is likely to enter these rankings and deliver connectivity that now 20 other economies consider normal.

The entry of several EU economies into the rankings this year should cause pause for thought in the UK, as some of these countries have historically been perceived as 'developing economies', but the rest of the EU is now stealing the march on us - Estonia, Slovenia, Denmark, Andorra, Netherlands, Finland, Lithuania, Italy and Latvia all have more FTTH than the UK can at present dream of.

Off to listen to Viviane......