The FTTH Congress is landing in Dubrovnik on October 29-30 to address the rollout status of fiber networks and its challenges across the Balkans. This is exciting news, because aside from selected exceptions, Balkan markets haven’t been the most looked at when it comes to fiber deployment in Europe. Foreign investors have shown limited interest in the region, but that’s not to say that local actors aren’t pushing for a dynamic fiber deployment. And the size of the consumer market is driving a renewed effort to connect local households and businesses to giga-speed broadband networks. Fiber passed over total premises by market The region is home to around 26 million households and businesses combined and spans across 11 markets. There are currently over 10 million fiber subscriptions across the Balkans, but the rollout of fiber networks has been progressing at very different rates in each market. At the end of last year, Romania accounted for more than half of the region’s total number of fiber subscriptions, with the technology representing almost 85% of all broadband accesses in the country. It is also one the most fiberized markets across Europe, with already over 95% of Romanian premises connected to fiber networks at end 2023. By contrast, the second largest market in the region, Greece, had a coverage of still under 30% of its total premises at the same period. Meanwhile, in Bulgaria, fiber has long been the leading access for broadband connections and other technologies only have a limited market share, like cable which currently only accounts for 1 in 10 broadband connections in the country. The fiber rollout status is also quite contrasted in other Southern European countries, with Northern and Eastern markets standing out while fiber deployment is lagging in more southern territories. But both new build and new fiber connections are expected to rapidly progress in the latter, with most of those markets expected to grow their fiber coverage well above 5% per year in the coming years. The fastest fiber deployment is expected to shake up the Greek market, which is projected to experience double-digit growth in the coming years. The peninsular country and its thousands of islands have been among the slowest in Europe to deploy fiber, with just around 28% of premises covered at the end of last year. This picture has nevertheless been shifted in recent quarters. Cosmote (Deutsche Telekom Group) has been leading the effort and already connected almost 1.5 million premises to its fiber network as of mid-2024. But the fastest rollout is now led by United, which claimed over 350k fiber premises built last spring, just 1.5 years after having started construction. The group announced a goal of 1 million premises...
