The MoPR Blog

AT&T and Verizon recently announced their worst quarter ever for DSL subscriber additions, with a combined total loss of 87,000 DSL customers.

So where did they all go?  They went to the cable operators and their high-speed Internet. Former DSL customers think DSL is simply too slow.

DSL is what telecom companies use to offer high-speed Internet access, and though it’s considerably faster than a regular phone connection (remember the good ol’ days of listening to AOL dialup?), it is generally outpaced by cable operator’s DSL killer, the cable modem.  Or so says Comcast’s COO Stephen Burke.

In a recent article appearing in Cable Digital News, Burke said that the results of this past quarter “continue to suggest, as some have said, that DSL may be the new dialup. This quarter, approximately two thirds of our net adds came from DSL customers.”

While many thought the slump was due to the struggling economy, Comcast and Cablevision proved them wrong and showed that cable operators are indeed the cause of AT&T and Verizon’s poor quarter due to their superior Internet service. Comcast and Cablevision have announced remarkable customer numbers (Comcast added over 278,000 broadband Internet customers), thanks in large part to the higher speeds they offer their customers.

Burke added that “I think we have a platform advantage in that we are offering much higher data speeds – and we plan to continue that advantage.”

But some say DSL isn’t entirely dead just yet.  Doug Williams, an analyst with Jupiter Research, sees things a little differently stating:

“Cable has historically offered faster speeds -both uploading and downloading speeds — but I think DSL is going to be around for a long, long time…Telcos are rolling out DSL in unserved communities, and that supports the idea that DSL is not going to be obsolete. It’s going to be one of the few technologies available for some people.”

DSL is the perfect option for low-power users relying on the service for simple tasks like email or basic surfing but not wanting blazingly fast downloads. But, if time is money, then the more than 87,000 DSL customers jumping ship is further proof of this statement.  While DSL may be less expensive than cable modem service, people are still choosing to pay a little bit more for faster broadband, especially if they are downloading movies, involved in serious online gaming or taking advantage of the other bandwidth-intensive applications that cable can easily support.

So what technology is coming next to knock the cable guys off their podium?  We’ll keep an eye out for what’s coming next.

Photo courtesy of PhotoCats: http://flickr.com/photos/orangecat.