A new report shows that shipment rates for DSL are still rising, with some 25 million broadband ports shipped during the past quarter. This is in contrast to major broadband researchers which have almost all universally predicted the flattening of DSL increases at figures well below that number.
The report comes from Dittberner Associates and the reason for the disparity with earlier reports is that many of these shipments are second generation, replacement shipments for existing DSL ports. The Telecommunications Industry Association for instance thinks that there are just under 50 million new DSL customers each year, which would make something like 50% of those ports replacements, likely to be upgrades either to ADSL2+ or to VDSL2.
Dittberner said global shipments of DSL ports grew 5% sequentially to 25 million, while shipments of Fiber to the Home ports reduced slightly by 5% to just 1.1 million ports. This latter figures was because there has been a radical change in the mix of homes and apartments in Japan, which constitutes a very large percentage of the global FTTH market.
DSL growth came from higher-than-expected subscriber growth in China, which accounted for more than a third of the world’s 12 million new DSL subscribers in the quarter. Which is odd since China already have more DSL than anyone else, so how could manufacturers NOT continue to predict growth there.
The combined DSL market share of Asian vendors Huawei Technologies and ZTE surpassed that of market leader Alcatel-Lucent for the first time.
“DSL shipments into North America will continue to decline, due to the slowdown in AT&T’s build out, Verizon’s shift to FTTH and the absence of alternative service providers,” Dittberner said.
Dittberner expects Verizon to add about one million fiber subscribers this year, more than the 800,000 that will be added in South Korea for the first time.
Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Hitachi together have a 68% share of the market for FTTH gear. The US Tellabs had an 11% share, with Siemens holding 9%.