Fixed line DSL service is at risk of obsolescence in Asia and the Pacific thanks to the widespread deployment of fiber optic cable.

According to a report from the industry analyst firm Ovum, fiber broadband will surpass DSL’s market lead in the Asia-Pacific region by 2014.

Study co-author Julie Kuntsler says Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan has already achieved more than 25 percent penetration of fiber to the home in those countries, and the People’s Republic of China’s accelerated fiber deployments mean that country is also on track to retire millions of miles of obsolete copper wiring in favor of fiber-delivered broadband.

With China’s enormous population, even today’s small percentage of Chinese citizens with access to fiber, currently 4 percent, still delivers a staggering number of customers now in excess of 74 million.

But fiber broadband growth is not just limited to those countries.  Fiber expansion projects are underway in  Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam — growth that will deliver faster broadband expansion than found in North America, where most phone companies continue to rely on traditional DSL, especially in rural service areas.

Factors that help promote fiber broadband deployment include cohesive national broadband policies from governments that insist on more than incremental broadband expansion, financial incentives for providers who install fiber broadband for consumers, and a population that wants fiber-fast Internet speeds.

The Fiber to the Home Council – Asia-Pacific predicts that 129 million customers in the region will dump copper wire DSL for fiber to the premises by 2014. Cable broadband will also increase its market share.  Combined, the two technologies will shove traditional DSL to second place, as the technology is expected to see no market share growth for the foreseeable future.

The People’s Republic of China will become the world leader in fiber optic network deployment by 2016, with more than 50 percent of all fiber subscribers worldwide residing in the country, according to a new report from research firm Ovum.

The unprecedented growth in fiber networks comes through a combination of government incentives, including subsidies and private-public partnerships, and cooperating Internet Service Providers, who want to reach more customers.

In fact, with the Chinese government aggressively pursuing and monitoring broadband upgrades, China will rapidly exceed broadband deployments found in other countries in Asia, including Korea and Japan.  That could allow China to become the global leader in broadband before the end of the decade.

China Telecom is one of the providers that is moving the country towards dominance in fiber deployments, on track to pass 26 million homes with fiber networks this year.

Through the company’s “Broadband China — Fiber Cities” project, China Telecom should pass 100 million homes with fiber broadband access by 2015, with the help of contractors like Alcatel-Lucent.

In smaller cities and rural areas, combination fiber and copper networks plan to deliver temporary speed upgrades with technology similar to AT&T U-verse. But China sees such upgrades as interim, until additional fiber networks can be constructed.

The upgrades are a win-win for China and its citizens.  China’s telecommunications companies are enjoying new revenue opportunities for their wired networks, Chinese citizens will eventually obtain some of the fastest broadband speeds on the planet, and the Chinese government wins an advanced telecommunications network on which it plans to continue growing the country’s digital economy and helping spur additional manufacturing and export opportunities.

So far, China’s large expanse and large rural, often poor population found further inland are not inhibiting China’s infrastructure development plans.

“You cannot become one of the world’s most powerful nations if you can’t deliver basic services to your own citizens,” says Wu Dan, a development coordinator for the Chinese government.  “With clean water, good roads, reliable power, and advanced telecommunications, China’s western cities will grow and become as important as coastal cities in China’s progress.  Internet access is a part of that progress.”

Bulgaria’s capital city, Sofia, will be blanketed in fiber-to-the-home broadband by the year 2014, according to Bulgarian Internet provider EVO.bg.  The company is investing $860 million to roll out its fiber network, which it says will deliver some of Europe’s fastest broadband speeds.

“Our goal is to improve the individual experience and satisfaction of our subscribers by providing new high-quality services, and increasing network capacity,” said Rosen Velikov, EVO chief executive, in a statement.

A significant number of fiber projects in Europe are underway in the east, as countries like Russia, Romania, and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have decided a wholesale upgrade of their communications infrastructure is in order.  Just 20 years ago, some customers waited years for a basic telephone line to be installed.

Today, broadband demand is causing a usage explosion, and companies are upgrading their networks to meet the challenges customers bring.

Nokia Siemens Networks is a major vendor for the project, and is confident Bulgaria’s fiber future will deliver the best possible service for the country’s Internet users.

“Bulgarian citizens demand increased broadband access and new, convergent services – EVO is playing an important role in bridging the broadband gap,” said Nokia Siemens Networks’ head of central-east Europe sales Dietmar Appeltauer.

Time Warner Cable customers in Austin, Tex. excited to learn DOCSIS 3 speed upgrades have finally arrived in the state capital are less than thrilled to learn the rug has been pulled out from under some of the high speeds the company was promising customers just one week earlier.

At issue is Road Runner Extreme, the DOCSIS 3 upgrade that delivers faster speeds at a “sweet spot” price of just $10 more than Road Runner Turbo.  In most Time Warner Cable markets, Road Runner Extreme delivers 30/5Mbps service, and so it was to be for Austin customers as well:

But Broadband Reports reader “SunnysGlimps,” who signed up for Extreme expecting those speeds, discovered “bait and switch” broadband instead, as the resulting speed test (and subsequent advertising) showed a much less impressive 20/2Mbps result.

“I was actually getting faster speeds with the Turbo then I am now with the capped Extreme package,” says Sunnysglimps. “My speed clearly hits a cap when it goes to 20/2Mbps on speedtest.net.”

This reader feels Time Warner Cable is engaged in false advertising in Austin.

“You cannot advertise 30/5Mbps, sell the service, charge more, and then change your advertising a few days later and say it won’t be what you just purchased.”

AT&T’s record of delivering reliable landline service has remained an open question for Bakersfield, Calif. residents for more than six months, as repeated outages leave several AT&T landline customers without access to a dial tone.  Even worse, some of the customers impacted have been left without any phone service for weeks on end, including one woman whose life literally depends on a working phone.

Andrea Williams, who lives alone in her Bakersfield home, suffered a stroke and has a heart condition — making access to a phone absolutely essential to her well-being.  Williams is also legally blind, making a cell phone an insurmountable challenge.  Instead, Williams says she has memorized the location of the buttons on her long-standing cordless landline phone, a phone that was out of service just after Christmas and largely stayed that way for three weeks.

Despite having made numerous calls to AT&T trying to get the problem corrected, Williams says no one from AT&T ever showed up.  It took an investigative report from Bakersfield’s KGET-TV newsroom to finally get AT&T to respond.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KGET Bakersfield ATT Phone Lines Crossed 12-29-10 and 1-10-11.flv[/flv]

Back in December, AT&T in Bakersfield left hundreds of customers without service or cross-connected with other customers’ phone lines.  It all culminated three weeks later in one health-challenged resident breaking out in tears when local TV station KGET finally helped get her service restored.  (5 minutes)

Fast forward to late June, and AT&T’s reliability is again up for a challenge, as some residents in the unincorporated community of Glennville, 30 miles north of Bakersfield, are fed up with repeated outages, even after eight families collectively paid $16,000 to AT&T to extend wired phone service and broadband to their neighborhood.

Around the same time Williams was experiencing problems with her phone line in December, residents in Glennville began experiencing repeated outages of their own.

“I think from December to January, it was 15 times it went out,” said resident Ray Schill.  “From February to now, [the lines have been out] another 10-15 times.”

Residents in Glennville are especially concerned because they cannot count on their landlines, and cell service is spotty to non-existent in the area.

“My major concern is we’re going to have a big problem up here — someone is going to be ill, we’re going to have a fire, someone’s going to die — who is liable,” Kathryn Ervin, a Glennville resident told KGET News.

What happens when residents call AT&T for help?

We get the runaround, says Schill, with promises extending through the months of May, June, and now July 15.

Schill doesn’t hold much confidence in AT&T’s promises, especially after the company responded to an inquiry from the state’s Public Utilities Commission which culminated in his complaint being closed-as-resolved.

Once again, KGET-TV was on the case for the benefit of its viewers, and reporter Kelsey Thomas received a remarkable response from AT&T — the company “couldn’t handle the number of people using the phones in Glennville.” (population: 280)

The company promises to “upgrade its software” to resolve the problem, but could not give Thomas a time frame for when that would be complete.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KGET Bakersfield Folks in Glennville fed up with ATT 6-27-11.mp4[/flv]

KGET-TV gets involved with AT&T once again, this time to help hundreds of residents of Glennville, Calif., who are also experiencing trouble with the company’s landline service.  (3 minutes)