DSL growth taking the lead in deployment over cable. Greatest growth from RBOCs.
Friday August 11 2:33 PM ET
DSL Lines Up 59 Percent in 2nd Quarter
dailynews.yahoo.com
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of U.S. digital subscriber lines, which deliver high-speed Internet connections over regular phone lines, surged 59 percent in the second quarter, far faster than rival cable TV links market consultancy TeleChoice said on Friday.
TeleChoice said in a report that the number of digital subscribe lines (DSL) in service rose to 1.2 million in the second quarter from 754,770 in the first quarter.
Many phone companies are banking that residential and business customers will choose DSL lines for high-speed Internet access instead of service by cable TV links.
DSL lines provide Web access at up to 100 times the speed of conventional phone lines.
Patrick Hurley, an analyst at Tulsa, Okla.-based TeleChoice, said that, by comparison, U.S. high-speed
Internet connections using cable TV lines had risen 20 to 25 percent in the second quarter. The number of high-speed cable TV links tops 2 million.
He told Reuters that both DSL and cable TV connections were likely to reach 10 million lines in three or four years.
Hurley added that competitive pricing, new services and especially self-install modems were speeding use of DSL lines.
``If phone companies can skip that (installation), they're really rolling,'' he said.
The strongest growth in DSL lines came from Baby Bell regional phone companies, the TeleChoice survey said. They have 76 percent of the total and increased their DSL lines by 62 percent.
Startup local phone companies boosted their DSL lines by 55 percent. They account for 23 percent of the total.
In Canada, the number of DSL lines in service grew by 46 percent to 187,000.
The TeleChoice report is based on a survey of companies that provide DSL lines.
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