July 3, 2012

Survey Sez 07/03/12

Based on forecasts for 80 countries, the number of digital-TV homes will double between 2011 and 2017 to 1.3 million. According to Digital TV Research, global digital penetration will climb from 48.6 percent last year to 86.7 percent by 2017. Of the 648 million digital-TV homes to be added between 2011-17, 259 million will come from digital cable. Primary FTA DTT (homes taking DTT but not subscribing to cable, DTH or IPTV) will bring in a further 174 million, with pay DTT adding 5 million. Pay IPTV will increase by 114 million, with pay DTH up 66 million and FTA DTH 31 million…Infonetics Research’s Richard Webb notes, "A slight dip in 3G femtocell revenue per unit held back overall revenue growth in the femtocell market in the first part of the year, but price erosion is an important factor that will drive long-term volume growth.” The makeup of global femtocell revenue is shifting radically: Between 2011 and 2016, Infonetics expects the share of consumer femtocells to shrink from 74 percent of the total market to 30 percent, while public-space femtocell share triples to 25 percent and enterprise revenue share grows the most, making up almost half the global market by 2016…Copper networks continued to be a cash cow for telcos that deliver broadband over DSL to more than 367 million subscribers worldwide in 2011. FTTH technologies bring ten times the bandwidth compared to advanced DSL technologies; however, ABI Research says, upgrades to advanced forms of DSL require a fraction of the investment of upgrades to FTTH. IPTV and OTT (at HD resolutions) also give telcos the necessary competitive edge for triple- and quad-play services that have been lacking against competing cable operators.