In Europe, DSL continues to post gains with an expected annual growth rate of 22% in the consumer/SOHO market through the year 2009, according to a new report from Probe Group. “DSL connectivity has only recently been launched in much of Eastern Europe with limited availability in most countries in that area,” comments Probe Group Research Director Alan Mosher. This clearly would be good news for European DSL equipment vendors such as Alcatel, Nokia and Siemens along with Chinese companies such as ZTE Corp and UTStarcom. The chinese vendors are coming on strong in Eastern Europe, which is more price sensitive than US or other developed parts of the world. It would be rather interesting to see how Europeans’ deal with ADSL2 and future mega-broadband versions of DSL technology!
A big reason why DSL is more popular in Europe is that many major countries like Germany or France only recently upgraded their copper infrastructure (France in the 70s, Germany in the 90s), and the more recent copper is more suitable for high speeds than the poorly maintained one in the US (some of which was laid during Woodrow Wilson’s administration)…
Of course, the higher population density means CO distances are lower, and that helps.