In total, 13 EU countries have experienced growth of more than 30% in FTTH/B subscribers in the last year, including Spain (64%), the Netherlands (43%), France and Portugal (both 41%).

In absolute numbers, the leading nations in the EU28 are France and Sweden, each with over 1.2 million FTTH/B subscribers. Russia remains a heavyweight with almost 9 million FTTH/B subscribers (1.4 million of which were added in 2013), while Ukraine has 1.3 million subscribers, and Turkey has 1.1 million.

Outside of Europe, China and Japan are undoubtedly the world leaders, with 37 million and 24.7 million FTTH/B subscribers, respectively.

These figures seem impressive, but there is still a long way to go. According to the analyst firm Heavy Reading, a country only reaches "fiber maturity" when 20% of its households subscribe to FTTH/B. So far, only nine countries worldwide have reached this threshold, and only three of them are European. The United Arab Emirates leads the global FTTH ranking (1) with 85% of households subscribed to FTTH/B, followed by South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan, with subscription rates ranging from 63% to 37%. The first European country, in seventh position in the global FTTH ranking, is Lithuania, with 100% coverage and 34% penetration, followed by Sweden (26.5%) and Latvia (23.3%). The rest of the European economies remain below the 20% threshold.

In 2013, the four countries that benefited from the largest deployments were Spain with 2.4 million new households, France with 710,000, and Portugal and Sweden with 550,000 each. This demonstrates that even countries considered "mature," such as Sweden, still have room to grow.
 
Germany and the UK have less than 1% penetration and were once not included in the FTTH ranking.
 
There is a new operator in the FTTH ranking: Switzerland, which has 2% household penetration and experienced 235% subscriber growth in the 12 months prior to December 2013. Of Switzerland's 73,816 subscribers, 70% were new subscribers in 2013, the highest rate in Europe. Turkey (46%), Spain (39%), and Poland (32%) follow with lower rates but much larger populations.

(1) To be included in the FTTH classification, a country must have more than 1% of households subscribed to FTTH/B and more than 200,000 households