Everyone's agreed: Widespread fiber access broadband rollout throughout Europe will help drive the region's economic growth and enable it to compete with Asia/Pacific and North America in terms of attracting business and prosperity.

As part of the regional effort, the European Commission has set an aggressive target (the only kind worth having) for fiber-to-the-home/building/shack connectivity -- at least 30 Mbit/s for every citizen by 2020. And as we saw recently, the EC's current vice president for the Digital Agenda, "Steely" Neelie Kroes, has her work cut out to get folks past the debating stage, let alone stimulating any notable action. (See Steely Neelie's FTTX Face Off.)

But Kroes must be pulling her hair out at the latest FTTH user numbers from European telcos, which show little progress around the continent. Sure, there is plenty of talk about investment and rollout, but we've been hearing that in multiple European languages for years. Getting the fiber in the ground and to businesses/households is another matter. (See Eircom Plans Fiber Rollout, KPN Preps 500Mbit/s FTTH and Glimmers of Hope for PT.)

Perhaps particularly frustrating is France Telecom SA, which has been shouting about its grand fiber access broadband plans for years. (For example, see this report from 2007 -- FT Fleshes Out FTTH .)

Regulatory wrangles have held up progress in France, but many of those appear to have been sorted out during the past year. As a result, FT once again pledged a certain level of investment and set new FTTH rollout targets for 2015.

But just now the level of ongoing investment and numbers of actual connections is minimal. Last week FT reported that it had 73,000 FTTH customers at the end of June, having added 8,000 during the second quarter. It has, though, "passed" nearly 820,000 homes and its investment in its fiber access plant is at least growing -- €70 million (US$100 million) invested during the second quarter compared with just €13 million ($18.5 million) during the same period a year earlier.

So what will take that figure into the hundreds of millions and persuade FT's fellow European heavyweights to follow suit? (I can hear some people suggesting now that BT Group plc is putting its money where its mouth is, but it remains to be seen how much of its program is fiber to the customer rather than fiber to the node with DSL-powered copper lines making the final link. See BT Relaxed on FTTX Unbundling.)

Ben Verwaayen, CEO at Alcatel-Lucent (a company that would benefit from an uptick in FTTH investments), has some ideas and with his background as CEO at BT he also knows how it all works from a carrier perspective too. (See AlcaLu Grows But Pressures Weigh and Verwaayen's Elmer Fudd Moment.)

He noted during his company's second-quarter earnings conference call last week that the EC's Digital Agenda is "highly ambitious" and that for significant investments to be apportioned for FTTH rollouts in Europe, the following network operator questions need to be answered:

• What is the business model for FTTH? How can operators make money from FTTH (which is very capital intensive)?

• Can FTTH be done for a lower cost than current models suggest?

• What are the rules? That is, what regulations will govern the FTTH landscape?

Verwaayen, who has been closely involved in multi-party discussions around European FTTH during the past few months, believes the "dynamics [around the EC's Digital Agenda] are going to be different in the next 12 months." It's uncertain whether that is the talk of a man who is confident or pessimistic about the market's potential.

What's clear, though, is that the market is still largely in limbo and that the questions posed by Verwaayen need to be answered with some clarity in the coming months, otherwise the dreams of the EC and anyone else banking on Europe being a digital powerhouse won't become a reality.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading