Larry Dignan, who writes at the Between The lines blog, talked to Qwest CTO Pieter Poll about company’s future plans including fiber-based broadband. Unlike Verizon, Qwest has opted for fiber-to-the-node strategy. The company is pushing fiber to a point where it can feed 350 homes using VDSL2 over copper.

Some highlights from the conversation and my take on why faster broadband isn’t just an option but a necessity for the company below the fold. Continue »

DSL Speeds and prices around the world went up 4.7% and 9.3% during the first quarter of 2008, according to Point Topic, a consulting firm that tracks broadband tariffs around the planet. The average price for a residential DSL connection at the end of Q1 2008 was $61.36 a month, while the speed was 6.52 Mbps. The Business DSL connections cost $227 a month for a speed of 4.13 Mbps.

The big change came as a result of big boosts provides by Latin American carriers, who boosted residential speeds by 36% to 2.74 Mbps. Telecom Argentina and Telefonica del Peru were two carriers that boosted speeds. In comparison, the prices for FTTx and cable tariffs have not changed much.

Average entry level broadband service tariff (PPP rates)

So all the noise, anger and finger-pointing at Comcast’s cheap traffic tricks didn’t impact its broadband business. The company just reported a decent enough first quarter, but what got my attention: It now has 14.1 million high-speed subscribers, compared to 13.6 million at the end of 2007. That translates to about 500,000 new subscribers. Given how broadband sales have slowed down for DSL providers (but not for FTTH services), this is pretty significant. Karl on DSL Reports is taking a glass-half-full approach to the earnings but writes that things are slowing down. Seems like extra speeds are helping push the revenues as well, according to the company:

The strong subscriber and revenue growth in the first quarter of 2008 benefited from the introduction of additional promotional offers and speed tiers, including Comcast’s BLAST and Performance Plus services (8Mbps or higher service) and Comcast’s Economy Internet service (768Kbps service).

Another astonishing number: Comcast added 639,000 Comcast Digital Voice (CDV) customers during the first quarter — penetration reached 12 percent or 5.1 million customers with revenues of about $587 million in the first quarter of 2008. Time Warner Cable also posted a similar kind of growth, adding 280,000 phone customers and 304,000 high-speed customers in the first quarter. In comparison, the phone companies keep losing landline customers. No wonder phone companies are worried.

Comcast, thanks to some stiff competition from lower-priced DSL offerings and Verizon FiOS combined with economic woes and fears of a recession, is beginning to see some slowdown in its broadband growth. Broadband has traditionally been a growth engine — and a big moneymaker — for Comcast, so this is a disturbing sign. Of course, the stock market is pretty pleased with Comcast today — dividends, stock buybacks and the perceived pragmatism of management (exemplified, in Comcast’s case, by not buying Sprint or Yahoo, as if they really can) usually provide a short-term boost to shares before reality kicks in.

Continue »

DSL-based broadband service providers may have started to catch up with cable companies in pure subscriber count terms, but when it comes to speeds, U.S. DSL companies are lagging behind not only the cable companies, but their peers around the world.

Between the second and third quarters of this year, the average DSL connection speed in the U.S. (and Canada) increased a mere 0.17 percent, according to research firm Point Topic, bringing the average download speed to just 2.971 megabits per second.

In comparison, the speeds in South & East Asia went up 132 percent to 3.582 Mbps, while Asia Pacific saw speeds increase 38.79 percent to 14.989 Mbps. Speeds in Western Europe gained by 6.22 percent to 5.552 Mbps, and in Eastern Europe, speeds are up 6.59 percent to 2.443 Mbps. In Latin America, speeds rose 29.06 percent to 1.652 Mbps, while the Middle East & Africa saw speeds dip 0.71 percent, to 1.404 Mbps. The carriers that gave DSL speeds a nudge include Korea Telecom, NTT, China Telecom, Fast Web, Telecom Argentina, and Telefonica and its affiliates.