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Home users to dominate Irish broadband
Wednesday, May 22 2002
by Aoife White


The Irish broadband market will be worth USD89 million by the end of 2006,
according to a report from technology research firm IDC.

The research company said that home users in Ireland will make up the most
valuable sector of the market at USD57 million by 2006 while the business market
will be worth only USD32 million in that same period of time.





Jill Finger, research manager for IDC's European Telecoms Service told
ElectricNews.Net that broadband usage in Ireland would grow steadily over the
next five years and home user prices would fall in that time period. 



The report from IDC said that broadband take-up increased rapidly in most
European countries over 2001, driven mainly by incumbent operator deployments and
aggressive marketing rather than competition by alternative competitors.





At the end of 2001 broadband access was available to at least 50 percent of
European homes and businesses, but only four percent of homes and eight percent
of business sites are paying for it. The overall European market was forecast to
grow from USD2 billion in 2001 to USD24 billion in 2006.



"Broadband usage and awareness are definitely on the rise in Europe. However,
the local loop unbundling process is simply too complex and politically
problematic to create a competitive broadband access market within a reasonable
time frame," said Finger. "In this tough economic climate for the telecoms
sector, the solution to the competitive access conundrum lies elsewhere, in
options such as fair wholesale network access," she said.



The IDC report, "European Broadband Access Services, Forecast and Analysis
2001-2006," said DSL will continue to be the primary method of access for the
majority of homes and businesses in most countries for the duration of the
forecast period.  Alternative access infrastructures, are either not
sufficiently deployed, or are too expensive to pose a serious challenge to DSL
and cable in the short term.