years (Figure 10). A record 130 million households are likely to have fi ber connectivity by 2013, up from 36 million households with access to fi ber last year, with Asia accounting for the lion’s share with almost 85 million Asian households connected through fi ber by 2013. Some 23 million connections are expected in the Americas (with most in the US), while 24 million households will have fi ber throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.85 Heavy Read-ing consumers are keen to cut costs, growth in VoIP services may be spurred by consumers searching for cheaper call rates. Indeed, the incumbent operator in New Caledonia saw a 20% migration in external traffi c towards its VoIP service in October 2008, based on consumer perceptions of its VoIP services being cheaper. 84 In terms of NGN deployment, many NGN deploy-ments predicts that FTTH will eventually reach 80% are going ahead despite the fi nancial crisis, or more of households in developed nations over the next 15-20 years, again raising implications for the future of the digital divide, since developing coun-tries with or without state support. Heavy Reading esti-mates that 9 million households will gain access to fi bre over 2009, to reach a total of 39 million house-holds are highly unlikely to be able to keep pace with worldwide and projects that FTTH installa-tions will increase by 30% annually over the next fi ve this rate of deployment. “ ” By using a part of the EU’s fi nancial package to help people to invest in their ground equipment, we could connect a million extra businesses or households in rural areas by the end of 2010. Giuliano Berretta, Chairman, European Satellite Operators Association. 73