Beltelecom Hits 1 Million GPON Subs

Beltelecom, the national operator in the Eastern European state of Belarus, has hit a significant ultra-broadband milestone by signing up its millionth fiber broadband customer months ahead of expectations.

The operator ended September with 956,500 broadband customers connected to its GPON broadband network and today announced that it has surpassed the 1 million mark, a target that had originally been set for the end of the year. The operator has celebrated the milestone by awarding the lucky millionth customer -- see picture below -- with a free triple-play package for a year.

Paul Pinsky, a Gomel-based senior lecturer in physical education and sport at the Belarusian State University of Transport, and his family celebrate their free year of triple-play comms services.

Beltelecom , the leading service provider in a country of about 9.5 million people, isn't stopping there: It might already have a high proportion of fiber broadband users -- a third of its total 3 million fixed broadband customers are now hooked up to its GPON network -- but it's aiming to grow that much further and have 2.3 million households connected to fiber broadband by 2020.

That would be a remarkable transformation for a company that only initiated its GPON-based broadband strategy in late 2011 and had just 300,000 fiber-based broadband customers at the start of 2015.

The network transformation is all tied to the operator's services strategy, as it aims to power down its PSTN (delivering voice services via its IMS platform instead) and ramp up its video customer base. Beltelecom already has more than 1.4 million IPTV customers and added more than 44,000 new IPTV subscribers during the third quarter alone.

— Ray Le Maistre, , Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading