Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde told ZDNet Australia that, based on his research findings, the number of broadband connections utilising DSL technologies had this quarter passed the number that utilised cable. "I think it is actually a global trend," he said. "ADSL is seen as a more suitable broadband service than cable."
Budde said there were around 10 million telephone connections and 2.5 million cable connections in Australia, so there was more chance for operators to connect to ADSL than cable. ADSL is more cost-efficient than cable for telcos, so operators promote ADSL far more vigorously than they do cable.
Telstra Bigpond spokesperson Kerrina Lawrence confirmed the company was focusing on ADSL more than cable. "Telstra's strategy when we rolled out fibre in 1994 was to focus on hybrid fibre coaxial cable," she said. "As we started to ramp up our investigation of ADSL it became an attractive technology that was more cost effective for Telstra."
According to Lawrence, Telstra now operates 800 ADSL-enabled exchanges covering 70 percent of the population. She added Telstra now has "well in excess of 190,000 broadband subscribers", and broaching the 200,000 milestone was imminent.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission yesterday released figures showing that, as of 30 June 2002, telecommunications companies serviced 283,600 broadband customers, with cable connections only about 7,000 in front of the fast-growing DSL sector.
The ACCC statement pointed out that DSL connections - 120,700 of which were ADSL and 13,500 were other types of DSL - were likely to overtake cable in the next quarter. These slightly lagged cable connections, which totalled 140,900.
The report showed subscriber growth between 31 July 2001 and 30 June 2002 to be 354 percent for ADSL, 864 percent for other DSL technologies and only 52 percent for cable.
Recent Nielsen//NetRatings figures showed Internet connections at greater than 56 kbps now exceed 500,000.
Of course this is going to be the trend. As most "young" people who have this technology live in "new" areas eg apartments and new housing areas or rent (and cannot install a cable solution), as cable has not been installed in these areas and the Telco's "have no plans to lay cable"
(I assume that is why you see such a proliferation of satellite dishes as well, in apartments and new housing areas because you cannot get cable which costs less and has more functionally - eg ABC, 7, 9, 10 and SBS on the same channel (I mean who wants a better product, certainly not the Pay TV people who have paid for satellite time which cannot cost them any more to add another user to a satellite solution, when it does to dig a trench and lay a cable)
I have just moved to a new house and therefore been forced to move from Telstra Bigpond Cable to a DSL carrier, yes it is a little cheaper, however bandwidth is much smaller, I have to access the internet through a gateway which is never specified in size and percentage of optimisation, unless I want to pay $40 more per month to go with Telstra ADSL which means I am $30 worse of than on cable, with a smaller bandwidth and higher ping rate.
I think that a high proportion of DSL users, given the problems over the last year with Telstra DSL backbones, and the higher cost/lower bandwidth and higher ping times, would choose a cable solution if the choice was truly theirs to make. If Australia is serious about making it a broadband savvy internet community, then surely part of that goal should be to give the people the best possible solution, and if that means digging trenches and laying cables why not? I mean if Telstra can get a telephone cable to my house, why not a fibre optic cable for the cable broadband to come down?