"There never was a good war, or a bad peace."
  —Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Give Peace A Chance

It's about time that industry analysts stopped witlessly fanning the flames of war between allegedly competing broadband technologies.

by Patricia Fusco ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 21, 2000]

Last week, a New Jersey telecommunications market-research company said the U.S. cable-modem industry would maintain its lead over competing digital subscriber line broadband technology for at least five years.

The Insight Research Corp. study concluded that cable is winning the race to deploy broadband services by volume—that it connects more customers. [See the related report at CLEC-Planet.]

Safe bet
The report projects that by the end of the year about 2 million U.S. homes will be connected to cable-modem Internet access.

That's a conservative estimate. In March Excite@Home reported that it serves more than 1.1 million customers with cable modem access nationwide. In April Time Warner's RoadRunner services reported that it is on track to connect 1 million cable modem customers by the end of second quarter. Consequently, more than 2.1 million U.S. homes should be connected to the Internet through cable modem access by June.

The report also states that there were about 589,000 DSL lines installed as of the end of 1999. CLECs completed more than 3,100 central office DSLAM installations throughout the nation and that ILECs have upgraded 2,130 of their central offices.

Firm but erroneous conclusion
Despite DSL deployment progress, Insight predicts that cable's early lead and continuing network buildouts will give them a slight edge over DSL in terms of connections by 2005. That's where the report is wrong.

Comparing DSL lines to cable modem access accounts just doesn't make a lot of sense. If Insight accurately reported that there were 589,000 DSL lines operating at the end of last year, each line would only have to provide broadband access to about 3.6 people in order to be serving 2.1 million customers right now.

And that's the problem. You cannot compare cable modem access to DSL service. While cable modems are designed to connect a home computer to the Internet, DSL services are designed to provide business access. Comparing a broadband business access account to a consumer broadband account applies fault-riddled logic and produces inherently flawed results.

Cable is a shared network that could bring work to a standstill during peak times in an office environment. Why else would Excite@Home offer DSL services through its @Work division? It recognized that DSL could serve a wide-area network without degrading its access.

Bear hug
Closed cable networks, which can't—won't?—provide competitive services to independent ISPs until exclusive contracts expire in about two years, have driven ISPs into the arms of DSL service providers. The result of this embrace is that DSL lines are being laid nationwide. Estimates of the number of DSL lines that will be ready to provide broadband services by the end of this year run as high as 2 million.

At that rate, there could be as many DSL lines in service as Insight contends there would be U.S. homes connected to the Internet via cable modem access.

Now who's winning the race to deploy broadband services?

Where's the fight?
To the extent that there's a race to deploy broadband services, it's because the demand for the high-speed Internet access is strong in both the business and consumer market segments. Let's call a cease-fire in the so-called broadband wars and declare that DSL appears to have won the business sector and cable appears on pace to dominate the consumer arena.

It's time to depoliticize the customer counts and forecasts and start delivering broadband access to the Internet for businesses and individuals alike.

[Ed note: The full 269-page Insight Research report is available through the company's Web site.]

—End