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Cover Story - Chain Reaction
May/June 2005

Asia Watch - Going DTH in India
May/June 2005

Broadband - The Long and Winding Road
May/June 2005

US Cable Operators: It's all about the Bundle
May/June 2005

Review - Content to Travel
May/June 2005

IPTV - Telecom Video
May/June 2005

Wireless Watch
May/June 2005

Broadband over DSL - using ordinary telephone lines - is continuing to grow strongly around the world. A research carried out by Point Topic estimates that the world installed base of DSL lines almost doubled in 2002, from 18.8 million to 36.3 million. This is based on initial figures from operators, which account for more than three-quarters of the world's DSL lines.

In the last quarter alone the world added 5.7 million DSL lines. The fastest growth is now in Western Europe, where the increase averaged 28.5 per cent in the last quarter. At least two operators, France Telecom and Swisscom, increased their installed base by over 50 per cent in three months.

Asia-Pacific is now growing more slowly. Although Japan was up by 33.7 per cent to over 5.6 million DSL lines, growth in Korea has been slackening off as the basic market approaches saturation. Korea Telecom achieved some DSL growth, to 4.9 million lines, but the number of DSL lines operated by its biggest competitor Hanaro actually dropped slightly. Hanaro's broadband customer base continued to grow but shifted to alternative technologies.

Once again, the Americas was the slowest growing region, averaging just 11 per cent. The big incumbent operators in the USA and Canada only managed from 9 per cent to 13 per cent growth in the quarter. "The regulatory regime in the USA has failed to promote strong broadband rollout by the telcos," says Tim Johnson, Publisher of Point Topic. Higher growth rates are being achieved by some alternative carriers and in Latin America.

Johnson said: "Back in the summer we forecast 35 million DSL lines by the end of the year and some people thought that was optimistic after the weak second quarter. But in fact the operators have done a little bit better than we expected, despite the continuing difficulties of the telecoms industry."

Johnson expects the number of DSL lines added each quarter to keep on increasing, but not at the same exponential rate. "My best guess would be about 60 million DSL lines by end-2003," he says.

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