With close to 27 million U.S. business and residential subscribers at the end of 2003, broadband is now clearly a mainstream service, reports In-Stat/MDR.
The high-tech market research firm projects that the mainstreaming of broadband will be huge, as the existence of a significant subscriber base opens up markets for other services that are looking to take advantage of the broadband connection, such as home entertainment/networking, Voice over IP (VoIP) and online gaming.
"This starts a cycle where growth in both broadband and applications feed the growth of each other," said Daryl Schoolar, a senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "This applies equally to the business subscriber. Broadband growth should also improve service provider operations as well."
However, the one major challenge that faces the future provisioning of broadband will come from a less tech-savvy subscriber.
According to Schoolar, "As broadband moves into mass adoption, newer subscribers will be less experienced with computers and the Internet. They will expect all of the benefits of the Internet, but will have less patience for dealing with its technical issues.
"When their service goes down they are going to be less likely than early adopters to perform self-diagnosis, and more likely to just pick up the phone and call customer service. Also, their lower level of technical knowledge will make communicating with them more difficult. However, the opportunities will outweigh the challenges."
In-Stat/MDR also found that:
