Fibre Group in Bandwidth Warning

New, super-fast fibre optic broadband will be much more bandwidth-hungry than conventional phone-line connections, new research has confirmed.

According to market development group FTTH Council Europe, which recently conducted a study across four European countries, internet usage by fibre broadband customers takes up around three times the bandwidth of ADSL users for each household. This could mean that the web faces increasing bandwidth constraints as use of the new technology grows.

The primary advantage for broadband users using fibre is speed: the connections offer up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps), compared with the UK average of under 3Mbps. However, the cost of installing the new fibre networks - estimated to be in the tens of billions - has thus far prevented them from being built in the UK and most other European countries.

However, the technology has gained a foothold in Scandinavian countries and Paris is also currently installing a city-wide network.

Commenting on the research, FTTH Council Europe president Joeri Van Bogaert said: "We expect this [bandwidth difference] to increase significantly as fibre adoption continues to increase across Europe and further services are developed with fibre in mind. When customers have faster connections, they use them more."

FTTH Council Europe's study also found that the average broadband speed on the Continent is rising by around 50 per cent per year - a rise driven in part by the adoption of new technology such as fibre broadband.

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