Nov, 2001 : Yankee Group Reports Cable Will Retain Lead over DSL

📅 November 5, 2001 - Three quarters of U.S. households will have high-speed Internet access available to them by year-end 2001, up from the 60%of homes passed by cable modem or DSL service providers at the end of 2000. Cable modem service will continue to be more broadly available, with cable reaching 66% of U.S. homes by year-end 2001, compared to 45% of U.S. homes with DSL available, according to the Yankee Group's (yankeegroup.com) recently published report, "Residential Broadband: Provisioning Cable Modem Service."

"Building out the network to make broadband available is only half thebattle," notes Michael Goodman, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group'sMedia & Entertainment Strategies research and consulting practice. "Successwill increasingly be driven by the network operators' ability to lower thecost of hooking up individual households for broadband service."
Cable operators now spend an average of $360 installing equipment to supporta new broadband subscriber, but that cost can drop significantly as cablecompanies encourage more new users to self-install cable modems purchasedfrom retail outlets. For cable operators such as Comcast, which now seesmore than one third of its new broadband customers install their own cablemodems, the adoption of self-installation can translate into millions ofdollars of savings annually. Other factors, such as the cross-training ofcable service technicians to install video or broadband services, will alsomake installation efforts more efficient.