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wired.com
Report: ADSL Will Overtake Cable
Wired News Report
12:00 p.m. 18.Dec.98.PST
A new study challenges the conventional thinking of telecom pundits who have blessed cable modems as the winning technology in the race to bring high-speed Internet access to consumers.
By 2004, the phone line-based technology of asymmetric digital subscriber line, or ADSL, will capture 37 percent of the market for US broadband subscribers, Allied Business Intelligence predicted Friday.
Cable modems, which deliver high-speed data over cable TV lines, will trail ADSL with a 26 percent market share, the company said. ADSL works over standard copper phone wiring and allows users to receive data roughly 50 times faster than today's 56K modems.
The New York-based research firm said that ADSL will pull out ahead of cable modems because of a recently adopted standard for a consumer-oriented flavor of ADSL known as "g.lite."
"The standard overcomes hurdles that limited widespread consumer adoption of ADSL," reads ABI's summary of its annual study on the broadband marketplace.
The International Telecommunication Union approved a "consumer" version of ADSL technology in October.
Though ADSL technology has been trailing behind increasingly available cable modems on the adoption curve, some experts agree that the arrival of a consumer standard could give ADSL the upper hand.
Compaq has already begun shipping ADSL modems on its new Presario PC models.
Allied Business Intelligence said that while there are more than 350,000 cable modem subscribers in the United States, market penetration remains low. Fewer than 5 percent of cable-ready homes subscribe, the firm said.
Satellite-based access is also progressing slowly, ABI said, and will have just 7 percent of the market in 2004. ABI predicts 21 million Americans will subscribe to some form of broadband access by that time.
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AOL has almost that many today, and many more than that right now, if you count Netscape and ICQ.
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