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U.S. Falling Behind in Broadband Race

European countries are overtaking the U.S. in the race to roll out broadband DSL to homes and businesses, according to figures released by Point-Topic at the DSL Forum meeting in Rome.

by Point-Topic [April 17, 2002]

European countries are overtaking the U.S. in the race to roll out broadband DSL to homes and businesses. Measured in terms of DSL lines per 100 of population, the U.S. now ranks tenth in the world league table—down from fifth only a year ago. DSL, for Digital Subscriber Line, is the technology which enables telcos to deliver broadband services, ten times or more as fast as an ordinary modem, over an standard telephone line. The rankings are prepared by point-topic.com, the website which tracks DSL developments worldwide.

While the U.S. increased its number of DSL lines by 78 percent, from 2.5 million to 4.4 million, during 2001, other countries grew much faster. The Asia-Pacific countries are still out in front, with South Korea having nearly 11 DSL lines for every 100 people, but European countries such as Germany, Finland, Sweden and Belgium are also showing very rapid growth. The U.S. with only 1.6 DSL lines per 100 people is failing to build on its early start in the technology (see tables below).

"This looks bad for growth prospects in the U.S.," says Tim Johnson, publisher of point-topic.com. "Broadband is not just a major market in its own right but it is also the platform for all kinds of new media services, and it's an essential tool for raising productivity and cutting costs."

The U.S. is falling behind partly because of the effects of the telecoms crash. New competitors offering DSL services have had severe financial problems and many have gone out of business. This has allowed the established telcos to rein back their DSL programs, rolling out to new customers at a relatively slow rate. Another factor is that many U.S. homes use the competing broadband technology, cable modems. But even when this is taken into account, the U.S. is still well down the broadband league table.

Other major economies are also lagging in the broadband race. Japan started serious DSL rollout only in 2001 but it is already thirteenth in terms of DSL lines per 100 population. France and Italy are nineteenth and twentieth respectively and the UK trails well behind at twenty-sixth, with only 0.24 lines per 100 people at the beginning of this year.

Two new Technical Reports (TR) approved by DSL Forum members will facilitate the accelerated mass market deployment of DSL:

TR 46—Auto-Configuration: Architecture & Framework now provides the framework for the complete auto-configuration process from basic DSL provisioning through advanced, managed services. Together with the first two components of that framework published in 2001, DSL Forum Technical Reports 37 and 44, TR 46 enables complete Plug-n-Play configuration of equipment for basic Internet service

TR 47—Operations & Network Management: DSL Service Flow-Through Fulfilment Management Interface automates service provisioning for DSL services throughout the supply chain for new orders, provisioning, and service upgrades

Both Technical Reports are available publicly at http://www.dslforum.org.

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