272M Fiber Connections in China: The Most Remarkable Achievement in My 20 Years of reporting
Jun Zhang, deputy chief engineer of China Telecom Shanghai, was surprised when this New York reporter called him and his colleagues heroes. They have connected directly to fiber more than 272M homes, twice as much as the entire rest of the world.
There are well over 300M homes passed. 92% of urban homes are covered by fiber. Cities like Shanghai are close to 100% covered. Nearly all the fiber build was done in five years. Prices are relatively low. I am not blind to the authoritarian Chinese state, but I can also admire the achievements.
LTE is approaching 1 billion users, with speeds constantly increasing. China Mobile is among the top four in 5G mmWave plans and the second to embrace Massive MIMO.
Huawei has delivered a testable 50G unit to China Mobile and passed testing at the European Advanced Networking Test Center.
Softbank was startled by large signups for fixed wireless in Tokyo, a city with almost 100% coverage of fiber home. T-Mobile in Austria has also seen a trend.
AT&T is fibering 3M homes/year. Telefonica doing millions in Brazil and most of Spain. France Telecom is well along and nearly all of Portugal covered. Bell Canada recently decided to speed up fiber because cable was killing them. 
12 bonded lines of 35b VDSL should be able to deliver 2 gig downstream ~400 meters. That's comparable to the most common G.fast backhaul, 2.4 gig GPON. Telcos are confident few will use the high speeds simultaneously so the high over-subscription is realistic. Upstream on the older DSLs is lower, so the upstream will probably be limited.