High fibre? How's 145 million connections?

While the government mulls over the rights and wrongs of a UK fibre rollout, millions of individuals are already throwing themselves onto the fibre bandwagon.

According to market watchers Informa, there are currently 49 million fibre-to-the-home, fibre-to-the-building and VDSL connections worldwide - the majority of which are housed in Asia-Pacific.

China is now the world's most fibre-hungry nation with 16 million connections, followed by 13.4 million in Japan.

The number of fibre connections across the globe is set to increase threefold by the end of 2013, reaching 145 million or one in five fixed line connections.

Despite its late start, Western Europe will join the fibre party. By 2013, 21 million - one in 10 - connections in the region will be over fibre, Informa says, with growth inspired by better regulation around the technology and "greater acceptance of the benefits" of fibre.

Some of the UK's telcos are already convinced of the benefits. In July last year, BT announced a £1.5bn plan to bring fibre access to 10 million homes, while Virgin Media recently unveiled a 50Mbps service.