Below is a news release documenting Paul Budde's prediction of an $81 billion market in broadband by 2010. (Budde is one of Australia's leading telecommunications industry analysts.)
Quadtel is a supplier of the ADSL modems that subscribers need to connect to broadband, using products manufactured by the world market leader in ADSL, Alcatel.
If correct, the analysis means that Quadtel is set to post explosive growth figures as the leading distributor of ADSL modems in Australia.
In addition, Quadtel is also moving into the marketplace for the niche products referred to in the article, which includes such technologies as firewalls, URL filtering products and voice gateways.
BROADBAND THE DECADE'S BOOMER, SAYS BUDDE. By Alan Wood May 1 2002
Independent IT and telco analyst Paul Budde says broadband will be the next cash cow for the telecommunications industry, and telcos that focus too much on mobile or narrow band networks will suffer.
Mr Budde, speaking on industry trends in Sydney today, said the Australia telecommunications market would be worth $90 billion in 2010 compared to $38 billion in 2001.
Broadband - the transmission of large amounts of electronic information including telephone calls, television and the internet, often over phone lines, cables or satellite - would account for $81 billion of that, he said.
Mr Budde said the telecommunications market was currently dominated by commodities-based products, and telcos would need to develop niche products to help grow revenues.
"The nature of commodities is prices are going down, margins are going down," he said.
"On the other side there is this value added element - value added services need to be bought to the network in order to have these extra margins."
He said the broadband network offered telcos more opportunities to build such value-added applications, more than mobile networks or narrow band networks.
He said mobile would remain voice driven, peaking at $7 billion annual revenue in 2002/2003 and dropping to $5 billion by 2010.
"There are far more opportunities on the broadband network to make lots of money out of it for companies, organisations as well as the telcos, than there are on the mobile network," Mr Budde said.
"I think 3G (mobile) is dead - I think we will never see the introduction of 3G. If anything happens it will be 4G towards the end of this decade".
Carriers including Telstra, Optus and Hutchison Australia have said they're committed to the development of a 3G mobile network, with Hutchison planning to roll out a network in late 2002/early 2003.
Mr Budde said "killer applications" on the broadband network would include family-based content, for example, relatives sending personal videos from one side of the world to the other.
He said only 150,000 Australian homes currently had broadband services, whereas more than 50 per cent of all 7.2 million households could be addressed by broadband.
Mr Budde said broadband development was being held back by a lack of foresight and network development by the larger telcos, including Telstra.
He said the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman received around 70,000 complaints per year compared to around 7,000 for the banking industry.
"Unfortunately the vision is not there and therefore you will start seeing reactive situations, rather than the planned organisation of how to implement broadband in the market," he said.
He said with the Federal Government bringing new emphasis to broadband companies like Canberra-based TransACT, Victorian-based Neighbourhood Cable and other regional service providers would emerge with greater prominence.
AAP
For further information contact Denis Orrock (02) 8852 4600
About Quadtel Limited
Sydney-based Quadtel Limited is a leading distributor of broadband products and services to the corporate, government and SME sectors. Through the company’s fully-owned subsidiary Marketing Results Pty Ltd, Quadtel is also Australia’s leading distributor of home and business technology products to the retail and mass merchandise markets. With a focus on best-of-breed product lines, Quadtel has formed distribution relationships with world?leading vendors including Alcatel, Foundry, D-Link, Network Associates, CacheFlow, Intuit, Symantec, ACCO and Maxtor. Quadtel is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX: QTL) and the Canadian Venture Exchange (CDNX: QTL) and has offices in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada. For more information visit www.quadtel.com or phone Quadtel’s head office in Sydney on +61 2 9492 4300.
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