Market consultancy Research and Markets recently released a report on the potential of the various technologies making up the worldwide broadband industry, including DSL, cable modem, fiberoptic, BPL and broadband satellite.
Key highlights of the report include:
There will be close to 500 million broadband subscribers worldwide in 2012.
Overall, telecom industry spending grew by more than 12% in 2006, driven by the demand for broadband and high-speed services.
DSL is the most common broadband access technology worldwide, capturing over 65% of the market.
VDSL and VDSL2 will provide telecom companies with the ability to not only offer telephony and high-speed Internet access, but also High Definition TV (HDTV), VoIP and multiple and simultaneous video streams over the same copper pair.
The cable modem sector lags behind DSL with only around 22% share of the market, however VoIP technology has provided the sector with new opportunities; evidence of this is coming from North America and Europe in particular.
Worldwide cable telephony services revenue is expected to reach around $11 billion in 2007.
At the moment around 50% of Internet traffic is consumed by less than 5% of Internet users, however it is only a matter of time before the other 95% catch up. This will result in a wild growth of local infrastructure projects over the next five years.
To compete with fixed broadband, it is essential for reliable high-speed wireless technologies to be developed. The competing technologies include the intermediate mobile standards like GPRS, emerging 3G standards, the fixed wireless technologies such as WiFi, WiMAX and a range of proprietary services operating in the 3.4GHz band.
Latin America is one of the world's fastest growing regions in terms of broadband uptake, with an annual growth rate of around 54% in 2006. However broadband penetration at the end of 2006 was only 2.5% -- considerably less than the global average of 5.4%.
The U.S. is one of only two countries in the OECD in which cable subscribers outnumber DSL subscribers. However, DSL is expected to overtake cable in 2008, and the telecom companies' massive fiber deployments will vastly improve the speeds and bandwidth of broadband networks, allowing for new services such as IPTV. The response by cable may be DOCSIS 3.0, a relatively cost-competitive, easy-to-deploy 'wideband' answer to fiberoptic networks.
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c60239.
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