In the war between cable modems and digital subscriber line, DSL may be finally getting its footing.
According to TeleChoice, a telecom consultancy in Boston, cable modem deployment still dwarfs deployment of DSL - 800,000 to 159,150 respectively - but DSL is growing faster.
In fact, DSL deployment could overtake cable modems soon. The number of deployed DSL lines more than doubled in the U.S. between the end of the first and second quarters of 1999, TeleChoice says.
"It may mean the technology has found its legs and is poised to reach its expected exponential market growth much sooner than most believed six months ago," says Laurie Falconer, DSL analyst at TeleChoice.
Between January and June, cable modem use in the U.S. has grown 60% vs. 300% for DSL, TeleChoice says.
In addition, Cahners In-Stat Group says asymmetric DSL shipments grew 59% in the second quarter over the first quarter. Worldwide DSL modem shipments are expected to top one million by year-end, Cahners says.
TeleChoice says cable modems already reached the one million mark earlier this year.
Part of the reason for the sudden burst in DSL deployment may be that DSL vendors have installed DSL gear in 3,742 out of 22,000 phone company switching offices in the U.S. Not all those offices serve the same number of customers, and the ones equipped with DSL gear can serve customers that represent 70% of local carrier income, TeleChoice says.
"Now that most of the major markets have DSL deployed in the [switching offices], the market can grow very quickly," Falconer says.
DSL gear at either end of a regular phone line make the wires capable of carrying multimegabits of data. Part of the optimistic projections may be related to the completion in June of a standard for DSL-Lite, an easy to install version of DSL. Vendors are scrambling to build modems that meet the standard and are interoperable with each other as soon as possible.
Cable modems may be stymied because many of the existing cable networks need costly, time-consuming upgrades before they can support high-bandwidth cable modem service.
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