75% Of U.S. Will Have Access To Broadband At Home By Year-End
By Dick Kelsey, Newsbytes ; BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A., ; 01 Nov 2001, 2:17 PM CST
Broadband will be available to three of four homes in the U.S. by the end of the year, but providers cannot thrive on reach alone, researchers said today.
The 75 percent availability is up significantly from the 60 percent reach at the end of 2000, according to a report by the Yankee Group, "Residential Broadband: Provisioning Cable Modem Service."
Sixty-six percent of U.S. households will be within the reach of cable modems and 45 percent of homes could have a digital subscriber line (DSL) by year's end.
But there's a lot more to broadband growth than whether cable modem or DSL connections are available to John or Jane Doe, the group said.
How much consumers want to spend is an important question, says Yankee Group analyst Imran Khan. "In a consumer survey of online households, 60 percent say they want high-speed access, yet only 50 percent want it at a price of $50 a month," Khan told Newsbytes. Dialup connections cost half that or less, and most home Internet surfers limit their use to e-mail and other activities that do not necessitate a high-speed connection.
Networks must cut the cost of home broadband to succeed, Yankee's Michael Goodman said. "Building out the network to make broadband available is only half the battle," he said.
Cable operators are cutting installation costs - which average $360 per subscriber - by giving customers the option of buying the equipment at a retail outlet and installing it themselves. Comcast is saving millions of dollars annually by encouraging subscribers to install cable modems themselves.
Yankee Group is on the Web at yankeegroup.com
Reported by Newsbytes.com, newsbytes.com |
