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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?"

8 of 27 comments (clear)

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

    Something like this.

  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.

  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.