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How Will the Euro Broadband Market Look in 2010?

Posted by Cliff on from the stepping-forward-or-falling-backward dept.

JimboG1 asks: "Yahoo News has posted a Reuters story looking at the relative positions of the cable companies and the telecos in Europe by 2010. Market analyst Lars Godell of Forrester predicts that the cable companies will fall behind the telecos in coming years as their lack of capital and bad reputations catch up with them. Does Slashdot feel this is realistic, considering telecos across Europe are failing to meet their penetration targets? More broadly, what will the European broadband market look like in 2010?"

27 comments

  1. Interestingly... by sebFlyte · · Score: 2, Interesting
    When silicon.com reported some research from Forrester of late, they drew the opposite conclusion, and suggested that the major telcos influence will wane over the next ten years as younger, better, services rise up.

    They also have another look at what things will look like down the line.

    --
    "Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend." - Emil Michel Cioran
    1. Re:Interestingly... by dago · · Score: 1

      No, they're saying that
      - xDSL will win over cable
      - Incumbents marketshare will decrease

      That's not contradictory ... cable operator are not the only competitors to incumbents.

      --
      #include "coucou.h"
  2. Three words... by keiferb · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Better than ours"*.

    *Yep, this post assumes the reader is also stuck in the US. If you're not in the US, don't flame me. Instead, take pity on me. =)

    1. Re:Three words... by Dr.Opveter · · Score: 2, Informative

      In less than a year i've seen my cable subscription (in Europe) go from 1.5Mbps/256Kbps to 4Mbps/1Mbps for the same price in several upgrades.

      I'm not complaining.

      --
      Sample this!
    2. Re:Three words... by JimboG1 · · Score: 2, Informative
      I see one of the major differences between the US market and the European market as the density of potential customers for the telecos, cable companies, and even satelite companies.

      The US is home to around 270 million people spread across roughly 3.5 million square miles. The EU is now home to about 450 million people, after the recent expansion, spread over only 1.4 million square miles (http://www.eubusiness.com/guides/enlarged_EU/).

      I'm no mathematician, but to me this gives the EU a much higher population density than the US, and therefore a built in advantage.

      keiferb, would you say this was the predominant reason or am I missing something?

    3. Re:Three words... by pete-classic · · Score: 0, Redundant

      You're "stuck" in the US?

      -Peter

    4. Re:Three words... by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      I would like to see what the broad band stats are for say the former East Germany, Poland, Greece, Turkey and for some of the "newer" members of the EU.
      I have a feeling that it is not very high.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    5. Re:Three words... by JimboG1 · · Score: 1
      Yea, good point. I haven't seen the stats for the countries you mention, although I reckon the new member states will not be as progressed as, say, the Netherlands or the UK.

      Turkey is probably at the bottom of any list you care to draw-up on this, but then again, they're not going to be given membership until at least 2015, if at all. As a broad rule of thumb, I would guess the further east you go, the lower the market penetration is in terms of usage and availability. But I have no figures to back this up. Anyone?

    6. Re:Three words... by JimboG1 · · Score: 1
      Slightly off topic but, out of interest; roughly what proportion of Slashdot users are based in the US? Is there a significant European readership?

      Maybe I should have asked this question before I submitted the story :)

    7. Re:Three words... by andersh · · Score: 1

      Including Turkey is a bit unfair.
      A. Turkey is NOT a European country
      B. They'll never become members of the EU
      C. It's dirt poor (with regional exceptions)

      Poland is not a bad place to be these days. And Greece has done remarkably well lately.

  3. My guess by missing000 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Something like this.

    1. Re:My guess by JimboG1 · · Score: 1
      :) I'm a newbie, and I have no idea how to mod your post "funny", or even if I can, but it made me laugh.

      Do you need to make a certain number of posts?

    2. Re:My guess by hyfe · · Score: 1

      Wait 'till you get mod-points :) .. It's random. It happens occasionally.. more often if you're logged in alot, get modded up yourself and actually spend your mod-points wisely when you get them.

      --
      "" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
    3. Re:My guess by JimboG1 · · Score: 1
      Ahhh....I see; it's discretionary. Thanks.

      It's good to know I'm not failing to see the correct button. It's happened before. :)

  4. 53%? by mikrorechner · · Score: 2, Interesting


    "Cash shortages will kill cable's momentum, and its market share will drop from 53 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2010," said market analyst Lars Godell.

    Hm, I can't really believe that cable has more than half of the market right now.

    I know for sure that in Germany, cable internet access is nearly non-existant. AFAIK, Italy, France and the UK also have far more DSL lines than cable. And in Scandinavia, many people have those fat 10mbps pipes, which definitively are not cable.

    I don't know much about other European countries, but if cable is supposed to have 53% market share, it must have close to 100% in all the other countries.

    Does anyone have links relevant to the topic? What do my fellow European Slashdoters use for their broadband connection (besides "my neighbours AP")?

    --
    "Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-my-own-Grandpa." - Dr Hubert Farnsworth
    1. Re:53%? by JimboG1 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Check-out http://www.dti.gov.uk/industries/telecoms/pdf/uk_b roadband_status_report_july_2004.pdf/ for the latest on the UK situation.

      I don't know of anything that compiles data across the 25 Member States.

    2. Re:53%? by fbjon · · Score: 1
      ADSL. Cable exists (Finland), but isn't really common I think. I haven't really seen any ads for it anywhere. Then again, I get a university discount for adsl, so what would I know :)

      Btw, those fat ones are mostly in Sweden. My god I wish Finland would pick up on the pipebandwagon soon, there's been some discussion at least.

      --
      True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
    3. Re:53%? by anticypher · · Score: 1

      You quoted from TFA, but you didn't even read what you pasted.

      Cable had about 50% europe-wide in 2000, that was 5 years ago as xDSL had only been around for a year. Now, in 2005, its down to less than 30%. In another 5 years, according to the research monkey who drew a straight line on a calendar, it will hit 15%. Presumably a few years after that, it will be negative :-)

      Probably a safe statement. None of the cable providers I know allow "true" internet connections. No servers, firewalls everywhere, no incoming connections, capped usage, oversubscribed to death. The capitals and major cities with big cable monopolies are the only places left offering cable internet. I haven't seen it in any smaller city.

      Many of the smaller xDSL providers are tearing into the cable and incumbent xDSL markets by offering true internet connections. Uncapped levels of traffic, servers and incoming connections allowed, no filtering or firewalling, IPv6, all the goodies that businesses require.

      Just to make the 'merkins jealous, I've got 10Mbps symetrical at home. But on a visit to friends in France recently, they had a new FreeBox version 4, with 12 Mbps down and 768k up. I couldn't even make their downloads lag pulling a ton of stuff down from some of my big servers. Sweet. To top it off, they only pay 29 euros per month for the service, which includes a static IP address, reverse DNS, and no cap.

      the AC

      --
      Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
  5. Not that relevant. by brunes69 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Canada has only 32 million people spread across roughly 3.85 million square miles, and by just about any measure (broadband penetration, cost of access), it surpasses the US by a fair margin.

    The problems in the US have roots other than the size of the country alone.

    1. Re:Not that relevant. by JimboG1 · · Score: 1
      That's very interesting.

      Do you have any insights into why this is?

    2. Re:Not that relevant. by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1
      They're not really 'spread across'. 80% live within 200 miles of the US border. 60% live between Quebec City and Windsor. The rest is pretty unpopulated.

      The US has an similar band between Boston and Washington DC.

    3. Re:Not that relevant. by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      Well Canada's population still tends to cluster around population centers more than the US.
      The vast majority of people tend to cluster near the Canada/US boarder. Something like 80% of the population is within 200 miles of the border.
      The rest of the population tends to clump together in small villages. These tend to have pretty good communications because they have to have a comsat link just to talk to the outside world.
      I would guess that only around places like Banif and Fort St. John would you have a situation close the the US. How many ranches have broadband?

      I find it interesting since I live in a smallish town in South Florida. I have many empty lots near me and it is a 5 mile drive to a gas station or convene store. I have cable modem and three DSL companies that I can choose from. A new housing project is going in near me and they have fiber to the door. Frankly I want to know where these poor broadband deprived people live so I can avoid moving there.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    4. Re:Not that relevant. by yamla · · Score: 1

      Even taking this into account, we are still less populated (by area) than most areas of the U.S. This gets MUCH worse when you eliminate those unpopulated areas of the U.S.

      --

      Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
    5. Re:Not that relevant. by brunes69 · · Score: 1

      Cable monopolies, lack of competition, lack of demand? I don't know, I would just be speculating. Maybe demand for broadband in the US has always been slower moving because so many people were originally with AOL.

  6. who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We left Europe long ago.

    1. Re:who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be blind to the obvious - it's a small world after all. Even if you don't understand the mechanisms of a global economy - you have to appreciate people like Linus Torvalds a proud European Finn, thank you very much.

  7. Other players are jumping on the bandwagon as well by hcdejong · · Score: 1

    The building society that owns my apartment (and ~60k more) is rolling out a glassfibre network right now. 10 Mbit/s up/down speed, plus TV and telephone, all for the price of 2 Mbit/s ADSL. Yay!
    building society (in Dutch, though)