DSL Prime: Good News from Abroad

There's DSL progress in India and Chile and even more progress in South Korea—almost everywhere but the U.S.

by Dave Burstein DSL Prime [July 19, 2004]

One Million Broadband Indians in 2004
Twenty Million by 2010, projects Maran
India's ready to explode in broadband, and the new government promises to continue eliminating barriers. The biggest obstacle—the high cost of international transit—is being overcome, as Reliance bought the FLAG cable and others are connecting.

Three carriers—Tata, Reliance, and the government-owned BSNL—have all been requesting bids on millions of lines of DSL. HFCL/HTL and UTStarcom are likely to share an order for half a million lines from BSNL. Sify has ambitious plans to work with regional cable operators. The coax networks are generally inadequate for cable modems, so Sify is stringing Cat 5 Ethernet. Dialup costs $8.50 on average.

Indian ISPs (TRAI data for dialup)

 

BSNL	1,128,172
VSNL/Tata	865,140
MTNL	769,434
Sify	658,192

There's no need to hype broadband to Dayanidhi Maran, new Communications Minister, who ran the cable operations for his family company, Sun Broadcasting, in Southern India. Educated in India and at Harvard, within a month of taking office he speaks of the need for conversion to IPv6, a new fiber optic cable across Southern Asia, and "reasonable tariff rates to drive the future growth of Internet and broadband access in the developing countries."

His potential political power shouldn't be underestimated. Grandnephew of Muthuvel Karunanidhi, DMK Party Chief, Maran negotiated directly with Sonia Gandhi to bring the Tamil party into the government. That was quite a turnaround, as many in Congress had accused the DMK of conspiracy with the Tamil Tigers who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi. "The net should be affordable to everyone," says Dayanidhi Maran.

Lehman Brothers' Steve Levy, recently back from visiting India, tells me the prices for both service and equipment are so low it's been profitless for nearly all. Wireless is expanding dramatically (up 40 percent) and passing wireline in many cities, with a combined total of 80 million lines (TRAI). Rumors of DSL equipment pricing that I hear are extremely aggressive as well.

Half a Million Chileans
Telefónica CTC Chile looks to a quarter million DSL subs by yearend, and is investing US$70 million to raise the count to 500,000 within two years, Juan Pablo Karmy tells El Diario Financiero. Karmy expects broadband service to represent 10 percent of revenues this year, compared to four percent in 2003, as a result of subscriber growth. Thanks to Paulette Hernandez of U.S. ITC for the initial report in English.

Telefónica in Spain has wider deployment than several richer countries, and in Latin America is far ahead of Telmex and other peers. Their take rate has been disappointing, possibly because they are not offering the low-priced multi-megabit services more successful carriers feature.

Free.fr now offers 5 Mbps downloads as part of their full-featured DSL + VoIP 30 euro service, with explosive growth. BT has held back from similar, looking for major premiums for speed; perhaps C & W/Bulldog offering 4 Mbps relatively inexpensively will force BT to raise speeds sensibly. In Germany, DT's ISP is held back by high prices from DT's network subsidiary, killing German growth. That's only sustainable because they still have a virtual monopoly. Either low price/high volume or high price/low volume is a plausible strategy for a monopoly, but Japan, Korea, and now France and Italy make it clear a competitive market goes to lower prices.

Tripath's Line Driver Power Slash
Small remotes without utility power. VDSL next?
"Dr. Tripathi is a pioneer in the DSL market segment," Will Strauss writes me, and Tripath's presentation was impressive. Their line drivers are based on Class D amplifiers, and cut power required almost by half. Alcatel is the first customer, taking 100,000 per month. TI has announced they will deliver similar, and a second chipmaker confirms the technology is sound and they will be emulating it. This means more capacity in ADSL remotes, and is required for VDSL remote DSLAMs.

VDSL: Line Powered in 2005
The operators are waiting
Carriers from Canada to Europe to Korea have asked me when they can line power VDSL, which will dramatically reduce the cost of installing field units. The chip makers tell me it's close, and CB Holland of Conklin/Intracom is the first to go on the record they plan a product. The "main engineering obstacle to this product is power...how much it will need (VDSL is a higher voltage solution), how many pairs it will take to deliver it, and how much voltage the service provider is willing to put on the lines," she writes.

Ian Meletios also showed at SUPERCOMM a remote DSLAM inside an aquarium full of water. "Could you freeze that for next year?" I asked, and his first thought was "Sure. We can go down to minus forty degrees." But neither of us were sure of the mechanical results as the ice expanded.

VDSL from the pole/neighborhood box may well be the most cost-effective way to serve customers the speeds they want. That's the path Korea Telecom, perhaps the world's most advanced carrier, is following to soon deliver 100/30 speeds. Hanaro is close to ordering similar from Lucent. Faster than SBC's 15/2, cheaper than Verizon's fiber to each home, the Korean Way may be the most efficient network this decade.

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

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