Lithuania leads FTTH race

VILNIUS - TEO LT, the largest provider of integrated telecommunication, IT and TV services in Lithuania, will invest about 96 million litas (27.8 million euros) this year in deployment of its next-generation fiber-optic network, reports news agency LETA. The company’s investments will already enable the availability of FTTH (Fiber to the Home) Internet services to approximately half of the country’s population this year, reported the company.

The total investments of TEO in the FTTH network, which has been expanded in fifty cities of Lithuania for three years, will at the end of this year amount to about 255 million litas.
According to Giedrius Vegys, the Chief Financial Officer, successful performance of TEO and the telecommunications market starting to show signs of recovery will allow the company to increase investments in deployment of its next-generation network, and this year the enterprise will allocate for that purpose 75 percent more funds than in 2009.
In 2010, total investments into the development of the network, information systems and other activity will amount to 178 million litas.

By the end of December, the FTTH network, which is installed up to the user’s computer, will be available for use by about half of the country’s population - 570,000 households. The next-generation network is being developed at the fastest rate in the country’s biggest cities - by the end of 2010 it will be available to approximately 88 percent of residents in Vilnius, 95 percent of residents in Klaipeda, 75 percent of residents in Kaunas, more than half of Panevezys and Siauliai residents.
At the end of June, the next-generation network services were used by more than 84,000 customers, and it is forecast that by the end of this year this number will be more than 100,000.

According to the data released by the FTTH Council Europe at the end of February, Lithuania is the country which is implementing next-generation fiber-optic Internet technologies at the fastest rate in Europe. Only in South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan are FTTH networks being developed faster than in Lithuania.

The next-generation fiber-optic network is characterized by the potential to transmit data at very high speeds. At present, the speed of the Internet services currently provided by TEO to its customers is 200 Mbps (Megabits per second). In the future, the company’s fiber-optic access will enable providing services at the speed of several Gigabits per second. The FTTH network will provide users with the possibility to enjoy the extremely high quality of different services through a single access point: to make telephone calls, watch digital TV, browse the Internet and send video records simultaneously.