CeBIT 2003: Alcatel's Serge Tchuruk Says DSL Leads Way Back to Growth

In a keynote address at CeBit 2003, Serge Tchuruk, Alcatel's CEO, said DSL subscriber growth has been unaffected by the worldwide telecom market contraction and is increasingly identified as the strategic area of investment for incumbent operators. DSL has become a mass-market phenomenon, said Tchuruk, with new installations now exceeding 2 million lines per month. The total annualized service provider revenue generated by DSL exceeded EUR 14 billion for 2002, which starts to compensate for voice revenue erosion seen in many markets. DSL penetration rates range from a high of 37% in South Korea to single digit figures in many of the industrialized countries (Canada 11%, Japan 7%, Germany 6.7%, Spain 5.3%, US 5%, France 3.1%), leaving considerable room for growth.

Beyond the numbers, Tchuruk pointed to broadband applications as the next big thing. As an example, Tchurek highlighted the new "SesameTV" service by Monaco Telecom, part of a video-on-demand (VoD) streamed television service delivered via DSL. Although VoD has failed before, Alcatel believes that it will succeed this time. Video compression technology and DSL bandwidth finally have matched up (TV quality at under 2 Mbps) and that 60 million broadband subscribers worldwide will create a sufficient critical mass. Tchuruk also said the DSL "triple-play" would be a means of reducing subscriber churn in the increasingly competitive telco fixed business.
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