Bell South Making Big Gains in DSL Growth and Testing New DSL Video Technology
By Andrew McLaughlin |
April 21st, 2006
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There is some interesting commentary over at IP Democracy regarding the most recent quarterly announcements by Bell South. Contrary to the price wars being waged in the DSL vs. Cable argument by Verizon and AT&T, Bell South managed to bring in a record number of new DSL subscribers totaling 263,000 for the quarter at an average price of about $42 per subscriber. These rates are on par with what cable operators are charging and show overall strength in the value that consumers place on higher speed broadband connections. It also suggests that Verizon and AT&T left some valuable revenue on the table by offering lower tier DSL services at heavily discounted prices.
Bell South is investing heavily in its DSL infrastructure to make sure subscribers have access to the fastest tiers that could reach 24Mbps by 2007. Almost 80% of the new DSL subscribers took notice by signing up for at least a 3Mbps service tier. Additionally, Bell South is testing a new version of video over DSL called ADSL2+. This technology allows for data rates can be as high as 24 Mbps downstream and 3.5 Mbit/s upstream depending distance from the central office. The executives said that the ADSL2+ test is only in technical trials and may or may not move forward to a full blown market trial.
As the other ILEC’s are getting their IPTV businesses launched, BellSouth continues to do well in their partnership with DIRECTV. They currently have a total of 628,000 TV customers and are growing at a fast pace. It should be interesting to watch how all of this plays out over the next 18 to 24 months as AT&T acquires Bell South and more IPTV markets come online.
Filed in: Broadband