Reports About the Death of Broadband are Premature - Subscriber Growth Remains Robust
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., July 22, 2002 -
Contrary to some published reports, broadband Internet services are alive and well. Increasing user demand for faster connections to the Web has led to substantial subscriber growth over the past year. According to In-Stat/MDR, at the beginning of 2002, the number of worldwide broadband subscribers passed the 30 million mark, and by the end of this year, worldwide subscriber totals are forecasted to surpass 46 million total subscribers. The high-tech market research firm reports that DSL has become the premier broadband access technology in the international market, while cable modem service continues to do extremely well in the US. At the same time, however, the availability of broadband access remains the single greatest challenge to long-term broadband growth, since the majority of the world’s telecommunications infrastructure cannot yet support broadband access technologies.
Because of the low penetration and adoption rates expected for cable modems in the business sector, the residential market will continue to be the real battleground between the broadband access technologies. In the US, cable operators have rapidly made cable modem service available to the majority of their residential customers, while almost ignoring the business community. On the other hand, DSL has made in-roads with businesses, and service providers have managed to increase their residential footprint with self-installation service packages. A key advantage in winning new broadband subscribers in the US has been the cable industry’s “Triple Play” bundled service package of voice, video, and high-speed Internet access – a marketing package that DSL service providers can rarely match.
In-Stat/MDR has also found that:
In late 2001, the number of worldwide DSL subscribers surpassed 17 million, enabling DSL service to replace cable modem service as the most widely-used broadband access technology. A sharp rise in the number of DSL subscribers in the in the Asia-Pacific region sparked worldwide DSL growth.
In the United States, cable modem subscribers continue to outnumber DSL subscribers by a wide margin. At the beginning of 2002, there were 7.12 million US cable modem subscribers and only 4.6 million DSL subscribers.
Other broadband access technologies like satellite broadband, Fiber-to-the-Home, and fixed wireless service, are merely bit players in the world of broadband. The three services account for only 5% of current worldwide broadband subscribers.
Recent In-Stat research, Broadband 2002: DSL & Cable Modem Services Fuel Worldwide Subscriber Growth (#IN020132IA), which examines the growth in broadband Internet subscribers, both in the US and worldwide, and provides an extensive discussion of the access technologies and the market drivers and hurdles affecting their deployment. In addition, the report provides both regional and worldwide subscriber forecasts by specific access technology.
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