Telecom Business

"We are seeing large cable companies moving aggressively into telephony," says Michael Greeson, a senior analyst at Parks Associates.  "Even the medium-size multiservice operations are moving into cable telephony.  Telcos really don't have much of a choice other than to offer new services such as video."

...."This is a rough time to be telling your investors that you will be spending millions of dollars on your network for which you will not see any return for four to five yea ...read more

Most analysts base their predictions on the assumption that fixed wireless is best suited for the "wire hole" - underserved bare spots where it's too expensive for service providers to deploy either DSL or cable modem services.  That viewpoint, says Michael Greeson, an analyst with Parks Associates, reflects what Sprint and WorldCom initially said when they were snapping up wireless spectrum licenses in 1998 and 1999.

"But then look what happened," Greeson says.  "When Sprint ...read more

Another recent survey, conducted by Parks Associates as part of its Broadband Access@ Home™ study, also concedes that DSL is taking the lead over cable modems as the consumer's choice for access.  Parks Associates' researchers covered a sample of approximately 600 broadband users, both cable and DSL, as well as over 6,000 dial-up Internet households in New York, Atlanta, San Jose and Phoenix.  The survey's results indicate that consumers were more aware of cable modem availabilit ...read more

High-bandwidth services and home networking, to a large extent, are joined at the hip in today's marketplace.  According to Hongjun Li, director of research and senior analyst for Dallas-based Parks Associates, which specializes in home networking research and consulting, last-mile broadband access to the home and in-home networks are driving each other.

"External networks are the conduit for the delivery of services.  If there is inadequate in-home networking infrastructure t ...read more

The need for advanced home wiring, also called structured wiring, has skyrocketed over the past couple of years, thanks in part to personal computers and the recent trend toward home-based work sites.  And it is an industry that is expected to boom, particularly as homeowners become more educated about the importance of structured wiring systems and begin demanding it in the homes they buy.

Parks Associates, a Dallas-based market research and consulting firm that specializes i ...read more