How POTS will be torn down. Today fixed line is struggling. Number of fixed line users dropping by the day:
emeraldinsight.com
In China one operator number of fixed-line users accumulated to 108.94 million by the month end, down 501,000 from end-January.
Some countries never even achieved high level of POTS penetration (former communists and emerging markets). They just adopted mobile.
Fixed-line operators do not seem to be doing well in most European markets. For years they have struggled to survive in an environment of change and business decline. In Czech Republic, for example, fixed-line subscriptions have decreased at CAGR of 8.8% between 2002 and 2007, and are currently at 22.7% of total population. The same is happening in other countries, with decreases in 2006-2007 of 5.7% in Austria (now at 24.7%), 3% in Hungary (32.3%), 5% in Poland (28.6%), and 7.8% in Slovenia (36.3%).
Canadian domestic wireless subscribers will abandon their landline telephone subscriptions at a rate of nine per cent each year in 2010 and 2011
Disconnection in some countries is high because people cannot afford the costs of keeping the land line and have tennats using mobile phones. This is the case in most developing countries.
In more developed markets POTS survives by being 'subsidized' by other parties.
Charging mobile operators high fees to connect to it.
online.wsj.com
Using the copper pairs to provide data (ADSL), bundling services as fixed line operator owns mobile network and bumdles -in a single package), fixed line minutes, ADSL and mobile minutes.
Note the vendors of the infrastructure are now disappearing via consolidation as Lucent, Alcatel, Nortel, Siemens are all disappearing by merger and no longer supporting their old platforms. |
