SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- A new report by leading telecom market research firm RHK Inc. shows the North American optical access market for broadband digital loop carriers (BB-DLCs), business passive optical networks (PONs), and residential fiber in the loop (FITL) will reach $3.8 billion by 2004, climbing from $2.65 billion in 2000. Driving this growth will be the PON business market, projected to grow at a CAGR of 380% during the 2000-2004 forecast period. This growth is attributed to service providers looking to replace copper-based T1 services and provide fiber-based value-added network services to the business market using IP technologies. As PON/FITL technologies are deployed, RHK expects the market for current BB-DLC offerings to diminish. "We believe that these new high-speed fiber-based services offer service providers the ability to add to their revenues and to improve their bottom-lines through the creation of valued-added, differentiated services -- thus making this segment a potentially explosive component of the access market," observed Barry Moon, senior analyst, Optical Access at RHK. "We expect fiber-based systems to account for 17% of vendor revenues by 2004 versus less than 1% in 2000." RHK Inc.