Networking This Week: Next-Generation DSL -- Super High Speed And HDTV-Ready

If you think DSL is yesterday's technology, think again. As the news shows this week, this isn't your father's DSL.

The big DSL news was the world's first demonstration of delivering a live HDTV broadcast over a DSL network. Broadcom's IPTV set-top box reference design platform was used by France Telecom to broadcast the French Open Tennis Tournament at Roland Garros Stadium in France on June 2, 2005.

What's the big deal, you ask? The demonstration may lead the way toward allowing telecom operators to offer HDTV broadcast and on-demand services over their existing DSL networks. That means that the telecom crowd is going after cable companies, in the same way that the cable companies are going after telecom's Internet access business.

When most consumers think DSL, though, they're not thinking HDTV. They're thinking broadband, and what they want more than anything is speed, speed, and more speed. Bell South is only too happy to comply. It just announced that its 2.3 million DSL customers will get access speeds of a sizzling 6 Mbps. It'll be available in the fourth quarter.

With all this news, is it any surprise that DSL is thriving? It shouldn't be. But to confirm it, DSL gained more than 10 million new subscribers during the first quarter of 2005 to reach 107 million worldwide, cementing its position as the most popular broadband technology, according to a study done by market research group Point Topic on behalf of the DSL Forum.But wait, is DSL really thriving or has its growth stalled? I guess it depends on who you talk to. Infonetics Research came out with a report claming that worldwide port shipments of DSL aggregation hardware rose only slightly in the first quarter of this year, while revenues dropped in the first quarter of this year. But the company was quick to add that the market still has a strong potential and should see long term growth, there will be 195 million worldwide subscribers by 2008, it claims.

As always, there was other news as well. And what's a week without VoIP news? The big news this week was Yahoo's agreement to buy six-year-old VoIP firm Dialpad. New Yahoo products that use DialPad technology may roll out within a month.

There was, of course, more as well, and much more coming up. To keep up with the latest, check out Networking Pipeline's News section.

Links in This Story

Broadcom IPTV Box Enables First Live Broadcast of HDTV Over DSL Bell South Intros Super High-Speed DSL

DSL Powers Ahead To Reach 107 Million Subscribers

DSL Shipments Stall, Revenues Drop: Report

Networking Pipeline's News section