According to a new survey from the Fiber To The Home Council (which is comprised of largely fiber hardware vendors and carriers), 71% of FTTH subscribers say they are “very satisfied” with their Internet service, compared with 53 percent for cable broadband and 52% for DSL. The survey, conducted by RVA LLC, polled 1,000 FTTH subscribers and 600 other broadband subscribers from a pool of 50,000 randomly selected consumers.
Most interesting perhaps is the fact that the FTTH council found that just 41% of broadband subscribers actually know what the term “fiber to the home” even means, compared to 28% one year ago. You might recall the FCC recently found (pdf) that 80% of broadband customers don’t even know what connection speed they have, despite it being clearly advertised at sale. The survey also found that FTTH is usually faster (shocking) than DSL or cable:The survey, which also asked respondents to measure and report the speed of their Internet connectivity via www.speakeasy.net, found that average FTTH download and upload speeds continue to stay well ahead of cable and DSL. Based on these reports, FTTH currently has a median download speed of 16.6 Mbps and an upload speed of 4.5 Mbps, an increase of 219 percent for download and 350 percent for upload speeds over the three years RVA has conducted this survey.The group says FTTH is now available to more than 16% of North American homes, with six million homes actually connected. 3.8 million of that total are Verizon FiOS customers.
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