Residential High-Speed Access To Surpass Dial-Up By 2005.

With a growth rate of over 230%, the year 2000 was a watershed period for residential high-speed Internet access in the United States. In a recently released report, The Strategis Group predicts that broadband access will continue to flourish, creating a total market of nearly 36 million subscribers in 2005 and surpassing dial-up access. The study, Residential High-Speed Internet: Cable Modems, DSL and Fixed Wireless, cites increasing consumer demand and technological innovations such as self-provisioning software as major reasons for the robust predicted growth.

Despite last year’s strong momentum, hurdles still remain. Infrastructure upgrades and truck roll bottlenecks are challenges that service providers must meet in order to make broadband access ubiquitous. Nevertheless, The Strategis Group believes that this past year has seen providers turn the corner and make great strides in overcoming those obstacles. “The jump in the number of high-speed customers certainly lends credence to that notion,” says Jason Marcheck, analyst with The Strategis Group. “We feel the progress that has been made over the past year will continue and that, over the next couple of years, more hurdles will fall.”

The Strategis Group predicts that service providers and equipment vendors in both the cable modem and the DSL space will have the opportunity to benefit from this growth. “Deployment of residential broadband is supply-side limited at this time. In order to cope with this, operators are relying more on automated subscriber installation and management tools to help overcome the bottleneck and meet this demand,” says Strategis Group analyst Keith Kennebeck.

While cable modems and DSL draw most of the attention in the residential space, other technologies are being deployed that will further enable customers to enjoy broadband Internet access. Fixed wireless and two-way satellite technologies have begun to be deployed in several cities around the country. These technologies are expected to play a fill-in role where cable modem and DSL services are not available, and in some cases, compete directly with those technologies.

In addition to the latest forecasts relevant to this industry, Residential High-Speed Internet: Cable Modems, DSL and Fixed Wireless also provides a look at the latest market landscape, technological and regulatory developments effecting residential broadband access, provides the latest deployment statistics for each technology, and explores the emergence of new technologies, such as digital broadcast satellite (DBS) and Fiber to the Home.

For more information at http://StrategisGroup.com