Mark, a good article in internettelephony.net about cable modems dominating,maybe we should buy a whole slew of these companies,or should have gone with COX and ATHM. Well hindsight is when a mule looks at his ass(or should that be a jackass?).
internettelephony.com
BEATEN TO THE PUNCH
Why cable operators have taken the lead in the high-speed residential data market
VINCE VITTORE
It took just eight days for C. Michael Armstrong to cast his vote in the cable modem vs. digital subscriber line debate. That's the how much time it took between the start of official negotiations and the announcement that Armstrong's AT&T would purchase Tele-Communications Inc.
The deal linked one of the most recognized brand names in the world with the future of cable modems. In TCI, AT&T not only gets access to more than 15 million homes that already subscribe to cable service; Armstrong gets a crack at being the first to introduce about 75% of those homes to high-speed Internet access service.
Assuming the merger meets regulatory and stockholder approval, AT&T by default will be one of the largest players in the high-speed residential Internet access market.
@Home, in which TCI has a major interest and voting control, has taken off like a bolt in its first 18 months of operation. Though the company hasn't gone public with its latest subscriber numbers, it's generally accepted among industry analysts that @Home is keeping close pace with Road Runner, the other major national cable modem service that includes Time Warner and MediaOne properties. As of August, when MediaOne began integrating its high-speed Internet service into the Road Runner fold, the group was claiming more than 100,000 users.
Not surprisingly, many of those users are early adopters drawn to the service by the 1.5 Mb/s that a typical cable modem draws off a coax line. However, while the raw numbers are impressive, when matched up against the on-line market as a whole, the percentage of users is still miniscule.
Still, the fact that cable operators have started deploying service gives them a huge advantage in converting high-speed Internet access from a high-end service reserved for the digerati to a mass-market product as common as cable TV and microwaves. All to the detriment of telcos.
Despite reams of early reports that telcos would pass cable operators in the high-speed Internet race, mounting evidence shows that the crossover is much further out and may not occur at all. In fact, as cable operators continue to stretch their lead in the residential market and telcos face digital subscriber line (DSL) competition from competitive local exchange carriers and Internet service providers, the next six to 12 months will be crucial for incumbent carriers.
A report from Forrester Research quantifies the challenge and is one of the first to concede the residential market to cable operators. The report says that cable operators will have about 700,000 subscribers by the end of this year, while regional Bell operating companies and GTE will claim about 25,000 asymmetrical DSL customers, with a good portion of those in U S West territory. And although those telco numbers don't include every potential customer, they cover most of the major metropolitan areas. The same report predicts that cable operators will have 13.6 million cable modem customers by 2002, while telcos will have only 2.2 million ADSL customers.
Its a good article,read the whole thing,its In Focus.
Tim |
