More than 1 million customers in North America access services via fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, a new study reveals.

The research, conducted by RVA Market Research on behalf of the Fiber-to-the-Home Council and the Telecommunications Industry Association, also found that FTTH deployments in the region now pass over 6 million homes, an increase of more than 2 million homes since March 2005. RVA released the figures this week in Las Vegas at the fifth-annual FTTH Conference & Expo.

RVA said 300,000 additional homes are being passed by fiber-to-the-prem networks each month, led by a cadre of telcos, municipalities and utilities, and real estate developers. A comprehensive list of FTTH communities, service providers and the technology platforms they are employing (GPON, BPON, EPON, Active Ethernet, etc.) is available on the Web (pdf).

“In 2006, FTTH providers in the United States have moved from pioneer efforts…into the mainstream, and are confirming that it is a question of when, not if, to deploy FTTH,” claimed FTTH Council President Joe Savage, in a release.

Despite this growth path, however, telcos such as AT&T are deploying FTTH only in greenfield situations, and offering advanced video and Internet services in brownfields via new flavors of DSL, including VDSL and VDSL2.