US home technology research group, Parks Associates says that there will be
33 million US homes that have broadband lines above 10Mbps by 2012.
The report says that the higher speeds will come due to high-definition Internet video which will need to be streamed. Currently just 5.7 million homes have such speeds in the US. These figures are from Parks’ North American Broadband Market Update.
Parks makes the point, and you could argue it, that until now broadband has been an arms race between cable and telcos, but that this is changing and that now HD video will take over as the driver. In the US there is a very atypical view, where cable operators have always been first with the higher speeds, and that will continue through this period, with Wall Street very unhappy that companies like Comcast, after decades of capex investment, still feel the need to upgrade, this time using DOCSIS 3.0, so that it can offer faster broadband lines than any telco.
Michael Yuanzhe, Director of Broadband and Gaming at Parks said ‘As consumer excitement over pure bandwidth subsides, service providers will have to deliver appealing, bandwidth-intensive, value-added services such as HD video streaming and content placeshifting in order to retain customers and increase ARPU.’
Parks says that the uncertainty around ‘network neutrality,’ and the contentious relationship between facility-based broadband service providers and over-the-top Internet companies may slow progress.