Optical Fiber And Cable Industry Has Achieved Leapfrog Development Since The 18th National Congress

From a large optical fiber and cable production country to a powerful optical communication country.

Optical fiber cable is an important carrier of information communication transmission, and also one of the foundations of digital economy information base, playing an irreplaceable basic strategic role. In the past decade, China has moved from a large optical fiber and cable production country to a powerful optical communication country, and its infrastructure capacity has been greatly improved, which has strongly supported the development of new information technologies and the construction of communication networks, and laid a solid foundation for promoting the digital economy to start a new journey.

Optical fiber and cable have made leapfrog development from production and manufacturing to optical network construction

The advantages of optical fiber, such as high bandwidth and low attenuation, make optical fiber communication technology develop rapidly in the world. The growth process of China's optical fiber and cable manufacturing industry from scratch, from small to large, from weak to strong has practiced the road of scientific development. In recent years, the construction of "broadband China", "optical industry", "copper industry", "double gigabit" and "network power" has boosted the fiber optic cable industry to achieve leapfrog development.

Over the past decade, driven by the growth of basic network construction, fixed broadband access and mobile traffic market demand, China's optical fiber market has achieved great development. It has built the world's largest optical fiber network, and is a veritable major producer of optical fiber and cable. The annual output of optical cables has steadily increased from 185 million core kilometers in 2012 to 322 million core kilometers in 2021, with an increase of 73.9%. From January to August 2022, the output of optical cable will be 232 million core kilometers, up 11.7% year on year, maintaining a high growth rate. As of August 2022, 2.98 billion core kilometers of optical cables have been produced in the past decade, ranking first in the world.

China is not only a major producer of optical fiber and cable, but also a major trading country, with the export volume of optical fiber and cable ranking first in the world. The total export volume of optical fiber and cable in 2021 is 4.9 times that in 2013. Among them, the export volume of optical fiber cables in 2021 will be 404000 tons, with an export volume of 16.84 billion yuan, 2.2 times and 1.7 times of that in 2017 respectively; The export volume of optical fiber was 9314 tons, with an export value of 3.07 billion yuan, 4.7 times and 2.0 times of that in 2017, respectively. The domestic leading enterprises of optical fiber and cable have actively deployed overseas. The export volume of optical fiber and cable in China has steadily increased. The export trade volume of optical fiber and cable in the first eight months of 2022 has increased by 22.7% year-on-year.

With the rapid development of optical fiber and cable industry, new breakthroughs have been made in China's optical fiber network construction. The length of optical cable lines has increased from 14.81 million km in 2012 to 57.91 million km in June 2022, an increase of 2.9 times. The compound annual growth rate of optical cable lines from 2012 to 2021 will reach 15.7%. China has built the world's largest and technologically leading optical fiber fixed communication network and mobile communication network, and all prefecture level cities in China have built optical network cities, especially the construction of the last kilometer of optical fiber cable has developed rapidly in the past decade. The optical cable length of the access network has increased from 6.69 million km in 2012 to 36.25 million km in June 2022, an increase of 4.4 times, with an annual compound growth rate of more than 20%. The proportion of the optical cable length of the access network has also increased from 45.2% ten years ago to 62.6% today. China has basically achieved the home access of optical fiber, and gradually developed towards the goals of fiber to room (FTTR) and fiber to desktop (FTTD) proposed in the "Fourteenth Five Year Plan". The construction of optical fiber and cable has also strongly promoted the construction of rural broadband network in China. China has historically achieved "broadband access to villages" in administrative villages across the country, making important contributions to narrowing the "digital divide" between urban and rural areas.

The development of optical fiber and cable makes the fixed Internet access bandwidth achieve exponential growth

Over the past decade, driven by national industrial policies such as 4G/5G network construction, broadband China, new infrastructure construction, and dual gigabit, China's broadband network construction has accelerated, and the optical fiber and high-speed process of fixed Internet access users has been accelerating. The fixed Internet access bandwidth has achieved exponential growth from 10M to 100M and then to gigabit.

In 2012, 81.2% of China's 175 million fixed Internet access users had bandwidth between 2M and 8M, and only 13.1% had bandwidth between 8M and above. Ten years later, by the end of August 2022, the number of fixed broadband access users has reached 571 million, an increase of 2.3 times, of which 95.0% are FTTH/O users. Users of 100M and above account for 93.8%, among which 12.4% have access bandwidth of 1000M and above. The access bandwidth of fixed Internet users has grown exponentially, and the number of gigabit bandwidth users has grown rapidly in recent years, with a growing proportion.

Behind the rapid growth of broadband user scale and bandwidth is the continuous improvement of optical network development and coverage capacity. In 2012, there were 115 million FTTH/O ports, accounting for 22.7% of Internet access ports. By August 2022, the number of FTTH/O ports will reach 985 million, increasing by 7.7 times, and the proportion of FTTH/O ports in Internet access ports will rise to 95.5%. The technology type of Internet broadband access ports has changed fundamentally, and the access ports will basically be all optical fiber. By August 2022, the number of 10G passive optical network (PON) ports with gigabit network service capacity in China has reached 12.14 million, and the gigabit optical broadband network coverage and service capacity have been rapidly improved.