In amongst all the broadband hype, one senior Gartner analyst has tipped ADSL as the winning broadband technology to be taken up in major population centres around Australia by the year 2003.
Analyst Ben Egan told ZDNet that despite the initial take-up of broadband cable services by businesses across the country, ADSL will eventually win over cable in time.
Cable will latch on very early because ADSL services will lag," Vice President and Director of Research Mobile and Wireless Gartner Worldwide, Bob Egan said.
"The issue in most regions, including Australia, is that we'll see cable more widely available initially because of the aggressive rollout by cable operators," Egan said.
But he says However, ADSL has the qualities and security that cable TV data "can't live up to for business needs."
According to Egan, broadband cable delivers in a shared environment where whole groups of buildings are tied to one cable port. This is good for residential areas, however bandwidth and reliability demands will struggle to live up to the requirements of businesses.
One factor inhibiting the rollout of ADSL initially is that copper pipes have to be upgraded to be able to support much higher speeds.
Shortcuts were taken to reduce the costs in maintaining copper for simple voice telephony services according to Egan. However, these shortcuts will create disasters when applying to data.
"The weak link in ADSL is that copper is already strung up, and due to weather conditions and various forms of damage over time, it's crucial for best practice that they are re-qualified," Egan said.
Furthermore, small ISPs will be the major players in rolling out broadband services due to their frustrations at the lack of aggression by the big carriers, according to Egan.
"They will want to experience revenue opportunities in a way that doesn't [make] them dependent on carriers," Egan said.
The carriers are very provincial and non-aggressive. With Small ISPs,
data is their business, they don't want their future behind a slow
moving giant."
ADSL will only reign in this country when it becomes more cost effective.
At present the majority of adsl users r gamers
Iwould get it myself (for gaming) but it's just too bloody expensive, even cable is too expensive.