A closer look at Huawei's fibre-to-the-room solution

I was at Huawei Singapore Technology Week 2025 to give a short presentation today. Guess what, I spotted Huawei's transparent fibre optic offering!

The best Wi-Fi is wired

Last year, I wrote about Singtel's FibreEverywhere offering, which allows homeowners to install high-speed wired cabling in every room - without any drilling or trunking.

Poor Wi-Fi coverage at home is a common issue that mesh Wi-Fi largely addresses. But for some, the problem persists and often requires wired cabling to resolve.

Install wired Ethernet cabling can be messy or unsightly. This is where transparent fibre optics technology comes in.

Squint to see it

The technology comes from Huawei. As I wrote then, the solution uses transparent cables made of plastic to transmit optical signals.

• Plastic lets it turn tighter corners than normal fibre optics.
• Glued along walls, ceilings, and door frames etc.
• Almost invisible; no ugly trunking needed.

Huawei calls it Fibre-to-the-Room, or FTTR.

More details

I confirmed that each FTTR cable supports 2.5Gbps. It functions like a hub, meaning the bandwidth is shared across all FTTR devices.

From the cable and header, the internal FTTR fibre connection appears to use PON technology too - only this time on your LAN. Overall, it's clean, clever solution.

In theory, you should be able to hook up your own Wi-Fi access point to the satellite unit's 1Gbps or 2.5Gbps Ethernet port (And disable its built-in Wi-Fi).

Huawei's FTTR solution is popular in countries like Malaysia and Thailand, where larger, multi-storey homes often make reliable Wi-Fi coverage a challenge.

In Singapore, only Singtel currently offers it. I was told that at least one other broadband operator is in talks to potentially launch it as well.

The system supports 10Gbps WAN and Wi-Fi 7. From what I’ve heard, a version with 10Gbps LAN over FTTR is expected before the end of 2025.