Richard. Look who is mentioned in the third part of that article!
DSL
The VDSL Experience —Continued
Still rocking
However, Britton said, "the technology is working fine, and the installations are going faster and faster."
Also, several Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) are currently in the middle of field tests, he said. Results will not be available until after the tests, with no definitive findings released at this time.
Qwest launched its own proprietary VDSL service in Phoenix in 1999, and the company garnered roughly 50,000 VDSL customers using bundled TV and telephony services. The telco also has a community outside of Denver, in Highlands Ranch, using the service.
According to a Qwest spokesperson, there are no plans to move beyond those two markets at this time.
And its not just the providers that are hesitant about the whole VDSL market, industry analysts also don't see a demand for VDSL.
Daryl Schoolar, a senior analyst at the ISP strategy division of Cahner's Instat, said the market for VDSL is only expected to reach one percent of the DSL segment in the next five years.
"I have not heard or seen much on ISPs offering VDSL," Schoolar said. "Also, considering the cost constraints that ISPs are facing due to ADSL and SDSL network buildouts, if they have to do an entirely new and costly buildout for VDSL I think they would be hesitant to jump into the market."
Brad Baldwin, director of IDC's broadband division, agreed. "VDSL is pretty far down the totem pole as far as products go," Baldwin said. "We only expect it to reach two percent compared to the other xDSL options out there, and we expect it to be even lower in the business sector."
But this is to be expected, Baldwin said. "It's a new technology and we expect that four or five years down the road it will be very popular."
He expects ADSL to be the most popular DSL version for residential customers and VDSL to run a close second. "We'll need to see how it plays out," Baldwin said.
Britton acknowledged the numbers, but pointed out that even with only one or two percent of the market, that's still a tidy sum to keep them in business.
"What they're saying is one percent of DSL line growth this year might be a true number, but when you look at the number of lines installed and the market share, both sets of numbers will be doubling year over year for the next five years," Britton said.
VDSL would make everything groovy
There's still hope for VDSL, though, even though it's going to be a bumpy ride. Technology innovations are already bringing the possibility of a more viable offering down the road.
New Visual Entertainment, Inc., a VDSL modem maker, recently announced the results of its latest speed/distance test, which clocked transmission speeds of 54.445 Mbps at a distance of 8,980 feet.
Vendors and analysts agree that VDSL will happen, eventually. The technology's ability to deliver services like video-on-demand could break the cable industry's chokehold on TV.
That's something many small ISPs should be happy about, in this world of cable mega-corporations like AT&T Corp. and AOL Time Warner.
But that time is not now, and VDSL companies are going to have to tighten up their belts for the lean times ahead, rather than make the same rush-to-deploy mistakes caused the current DSL pain.
It's a product that is before its time, one that is surely to be popular down the road. That's no comfort for companies today—after all, most of the people my age didn't buy their first Jimi Hendrix album until long after he was dead and buried
Excel - Greg
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