DSL Prime: It's a DSL World

DSL is growing very rapidly, especially in nations like France, Japan, and Canada, whose governments are encouraging competition. Guess why the U.S. lags behind.

by Dave Burstein DSL Prime [May 19, 2004]

Happy Days in the North
Telus, the Canadian operator nobody knows, had a strong quarter with improved revenues and profits. Better results in wireless were the key, but 43,000 increased DSL subs (to 603,000) also helped. Bell Canada also was happy. "Net DSL additions of 115,000 (to 1.6 million) represent the strongest quarterly increase since 2001. The subscriptions to value-added services, such as Desktop Anti-Virus and Desktop Firewall, were up by more than 200 percent." Siemens/Efficient was enthused by winning a bid for wireless home routers for Bell.

Perhaps cold climates yield big broadband gains in the winter. Telenor added 31,000 to 208,000, while Norwegian competitor NexGenTel reached 75,000.

Hey Brits. Come to New York
Free Flight if you sign up for BT Broadband
BT's latest marketing gimmick is pretty tempting. Sign up for DSL, and they'll give you a free airline ticket to your choice of a dozen U.S. and European cities. There's a lot of fine print (45 day advance, etc.) but a trans-Atlantic return is a pretty good premium.

Marketing is now a higher cost than gear for most real broadband carriers, which means it's time to rethink several strategies. For example, it's almost for sure cheaper to hook up every new phone customer to DSL in the initial install, saving enough on marketing, provisioning, and hookup to more than cover the waste of unused equipment.

Imran Hajimusa of Infineon has been telling me their voice + DSL chips save money today in remote terminals. The additional cost is more than recovered by the eventual saving on technician visits. Last year, I ran the numbers with him and that was only true with the highest take rates; this year, I suspect it will be the right choice almost everywhere.

Correction: Penetration figures
"100 homes" should have been "100 people"
Thanks to David Young of Verizon for being the first to catch my mistakes. The original data, from Point-Topic, was labeled clearly. In addition, I printed several yearend 2002 figures in a context that suggested they were current—again, my mistake, not Point-Topic's. These are yearend 2003:

 

Country	Users per 100 population
South Korea	23.5
Hong Kong	18.2
Canada	14.8
Switzerland	14.4
Taiwan	13.4
Denmark	12.4
Netherlands	11.6
Iceland	10.8
Japan	10.7
Sweden	10.7
Singapore	9.0
U.S.	8.7

Some others are: France at 5.8, Germany at 5.5, UK at 5.4, Spain 5.3, Italy 4.4, Australia 3.8, China 1.1. Tim Johnson's conclusion for 2003 stands, that the countries with the highest penetration are finding it hardest to show big gains.

Since I wrote that, I've seen outstanding quarterly results from around the world. I suspect 2004 will be a very strong year, as broadband becomes essential for Internet users around the world. I suspect a turning point has been reached in dozens of countries, including the U.S. Too early to be sure, however.

Copyright 2004 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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