| Verizon: It Ain't DSL. DSL is Too Slow |
| Written by Dave Burstein |
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"Verizon has begun to phase out the term 'DSL' in its marketing, aware that many consumers now associate it with slower Web spee Whether cable knocks out wireline telcos is a crucial question without a clear answer. Q3, Comcast alone added more data customers than all the telcos in the U.S.. Q2 was perhaps worse. One quarter could have been an anomaly, two look like a trend, three would be time to panic. Currently, only about a third of the lines at Verizon and AT&T can get FIOS or U-Verse, with no attractive TV offering for the majority of their homes served. Comcast's Brian Roberts says his main growth has been in tripleplay. Neither Verizon nor AT&T would reveal which parts of their territory are losing lines the fastest, but it's likely that they are being killed where they haven't upgraded. Verizon's current schedule is to offer FIOS to a majority in 2010 and 60-75% in the few years after. That's slightly slower than initially planned, but still impressive for a rollout to 20 million homes. No one in the Western World is close. That still leaves them with ten million lines or more where cable has a much better offering. They are starting to worry, especially because FIOS is not winning many customers from cable. Most are upgrades of Verizon's own customers or being taken from satellite. Cablevision is still beating FIOS, without DOCSIS 3.0, suggesting how hard it is to persuade people to switch. I confirmed that Verizon is running away from DSL on their corporate fact sheet. Verizon Telecom: Key Products and Services
I first wrote "Four million of those HSI customers are DSL." Then I doublechecked. All those 6.3M "HSI" are DSL, with FIOS counted separately. DSL doesn't have to be slow, but Verizon is offering 1999 era speeds. They need to do something more dramatic than just changing the name to hold those customers. This vocabulary change is appropriate for the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland.
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ds. Even internally, employees are encouraged to use the term "HSI," or high-speed Internet, instead." writes Amol Sharma in the WSJ. Verizon and AT&T have been clobbered by cable the last few months, after making the race close the last few years. DSL can go 100 meg symmetrical if you bring it close, which Verizon will be doing in apartment buildings, perhaps mine one day. Verizon all but stopped stopped investing in DSL in 2002, killing numerous extensions and upgrades. The result is the majority of Verizon DSL lines can't do more than 3 meg down, and none more than 6 meg, the speed they opened with in 1999. Nearly all U.S. cable modems can do at least 6 meg, and most are at 10 and 15 meg today. Verizon chose to invest in FIOS instead, and are now paying the price for chopping DSL.
