Led by gains in the cable and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) sectors, the broadband customer premise equipment market continued to post solid gains in the first quarter of this year, according to a recent report by Infonetics Research.

Thanks to the continued strong growth of FTTH and cable CPE, the global broadband CPE market hit $2.2 billion in the first quarter, which was an increase of 6 percent sequentially and 17 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

“Better than expected sales of higher-end cable CPE, including headed and headless video gateways being sold in North America and Europe, helped the broadband CPE market put up another strong quarter,” said Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research.

“Operators across multiple verticals are in the middle of a long-term transition to higher-speed broadband technologies like FTTH, DOCSIS 3.0 and VDSL2 to keep up with subscriber demand for multi-screen video.”

Other highlights from the broadband CPE report included:

• Though the overall DSL CPE market is slowing on an annual basis, VDSL CPE continued to enjoy strong growth at more than 30 percent year-over-year, particularly in North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa)

• Broadband CPE share leader Huawei pulled farther away from the pack in the first quarter, thanks to a 26 percent spike in revenue coming mostly from China, Singapore and Malaysia, where it’s the primary supplier of GPON ONTs and ADSL CPE

•Former No. 2 ZTE slipped to fourth place, leapfrogged by Technicolor and Arris

• Pace’s share of the broadband CPE market continued to grow, and Infonetics expects it to challenge for a place in the top three this year

• Headless video gateways were forecast by Infonetics to grow at a 117 percent compound annual growth rate from 2012 to 2017.