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Broadband Access
Siemens Trumpets Triple Play
Broadband Boosts Fixed CAGR, Says CEO
by Iain Morris
Will the spate of emerging broadband services be
remembered as technological fads? Or will they imitate the
example of the television, the telephone and the desktop
computer -- dismissed as such only to become integral
components of our day-to-day lives?
Eduardo Montes, CEO of Siemens Communications, quite
clearly believes that in years to come today’s naysayers will
seem as short-sighted as their predecessors. Presenting his
keynote speech at the Broadband World Forum in Paris today,
Montes gave short shrift to those who fail to recognise the
potential of the broadband future.
“Not everyone hears opportunities knocking,” he said,
referring to IBM’s 1943 prediction that the market opportunity
would amount to no more than five computers. “Broadband is
the future of our civilisation.”
According to Montes, figures released by the Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicate that
broadband is one of the major drivers of macroeconomic
growth today, accounting for one third of the recent
productivity increases seen in developed markets.
Fuelling that broadband driver, says Montes, are three related
trends: consolidation, convergence and the emergence of
triple play.
“Achieving critical mass to offer the most complete portfolio of
services for the communications market is a key element,” he
said, noting that the number of operators active in the US
and European markets has fallen from 17 before 2005 to just
10 today -- a trend that has been mirrored in the vendor
community, as giants such as Alcatel and Lucent, or, indeed,
Nokia and Siemens, unite to reap the economies of scale
necessary for that service development.
Echoing the findings of a report recently published by KPMG
(see related story, "Broadband Boost for Telcos"), Montes went on to argue that the demand
for broadband and converged services is evident from recent
statistics. In the fixed-line market, he said, revenues
increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3
percent last year, outstripping growth in the mobile market,
where CAGR was just 4.8 percent. Like KPMG, Montes
attributes the disparity to the new wave of broadband
launches that are catching on with consumers worldwide.
With broadband competition between rival technologies set to
increase, operators are currently being forced to differentiate
themselves at the service level, argues Montes. He believes
that triple play offers one of the best means of doing so now,
and claims that even in emerging markets innovative triple-
play providers are capturing market share from service
providers that fail to act.
“Multimedios in Mexico is successfully challenging traditional
telcos with triple play,” says Montes.
In the future, he says, one major challenge in the developed
markets of Europe will be to overcome the regulatory hurdles
that stand in the way of VDSL and PON deployments, which
are aimed at facilitating an ‘ultra-high-speed internet’ that will
support services such as HDTV.
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