According to the FTTH Council and IDATE Fiber broadband connections in the Asia-Pacific grew by 35% to 115.8 million at the end of 2014 with 338 million premises passed.

Leading the way is Japan with 100% of premises passed, followed by South Korea and Singapore with 95% each.

Japan has one of the most advanced telecommunications’ markets in the world. In a new study by BuddeCom the analyst note suggests that FTTH is making up ‘an increasing proportion of the fixed broadband market at the expense of DSL’ which is leading to operators planning a DSL network shutdown.

“Smart cities are being built upon Fiber, including Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), Fiber-to-the-building (FTTB), Fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) and Fiber-to-the-antenna (FTTA), to support higher speeds and the increasing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices for the smart home,” said Peter Macaulay, president of the FTTH Council Asia-Pacific.

However, “there is still a great deal of room for growth in the market,” he added.

“This is an exciting time for the council with new deployments in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Pakistan,” he said. “We are encouraged to see Asia-Pacific homes and businesses becoming more open to the benefits of high speed fiber.”

Other cities in the area which featured in the top seven were Hong Kong, Malaysia and China.