Three months after the clocks said goodbye to 2006, the final polls are in: 2006 was a blockbuster of a year for the broadband business worldwide, including US, but from going forward, the gallop is going to turn into a trot.
- At the end of 2006, there were 281 million broadband subscribers world wide, up by 67 million according to London-based Point-Topic.
- DSL subscribers total 185 million, making it the most popular access technology for now, with a 65.7% market share, according to DSL Forum.
- In the US, however, DSL trails, and accounts for 24 million connections versus cable companies have 55% of the total market, with 29.3 million.
- Fiber to the home (and related technologies) now account for 10% of total global broadband connections. We suspect this is a percentage that is only going to grow bigger, especially as Japan, France, US (Verizon) and others aggressively push their FTTx offerings.
- United States is the largest broadband market, with 57 million broadband lines, while China is second with 51.9 million. (They might be bigger than US by now… this is year-end data.)
- US added 10.2 million new broadband subscribers in 2006, according to Leichtman Research Group. Phone companies added 5.5 million, and cable providers added 4.7 million.
It will be interesting to see how Fiber To Home (FTTH) technology gains the market share. As you mentioned, Verizon seems to have the lead right now.
thankfully broadband has brought us sites like http://www.youtube.com and http://www.cavenger.com
Homes with multiple HD TV sets will drive FTTx. There is no other way to effectively deliver the required bandwidth – period. IPTV will change it everything.
The carriers building FTTx such as Verizon will prove that the maintenance savings of an all fiber network compared to one with copper will eventually make the shareholders forget about the billions it cost to build.
It will be interesting to see how DSL companies fare with this increased demand considering the pressures in pricing such as CNXT and BRCM have stated in their past couple of quarters especially in Asia and Europe. North American market continues to be bullish considering the gains on Cable. However, IPTV is too slow off the blocks here compared to Asia or Europe, so it will be an intriguing battle between price and features.
Fiber to home is undoubtedly going to grow, but we must remember that broadband over power lines, satellites, and other forms of Wi-Fi like WiMAX are in development. It’ll be interesting to see how these alternate forms of connection to high-speed internet will account for broadband growth.
http://highspeed-internet-provider.com
DSL will always rule in the high speed industry. Its cheap and more reliable than cable! http://nationwide-dsl.com