The cable broadband market posted a record year at $1.2 billion in worldwide revenue as the long-term DOCSIS 3.0 strategy trumped short-term economic concerns.
With telcos spending ever more capital on deep fiber rollouts, cable operators aren't about to roll over and sacrifice the tremendous gains they've made in broadband and telephony subscribers.
Infonetics Research believes operators are going to take as much of a break as they can in 2009 to both digest all the downstream capacity they deployed in 2008, and also to be more strategic with their DOCSIS 3.0-related rollouts.
Highlights of an Infonetics study include:
- 2008 was a banner year for the cable broadband hardware market, worldwide revenue for which jumped 35 percent from the previous year to $1.2 billion, led by aggressive deployments of CMTS downstream ports to support channel bonding.
- For the quarter, the combined CMTS and universal edge QAM (UEQ) markets increased just 3 percent in 4Q08 to $275 million, on the heels of a 28 percent decrease in 3Q08.
- The economic uncertainty and decrease in housing starts in the U.S. contributed to the flat quarter, but will have more of an impact throughout 2009 as cable operators pull back on downstream port roll-outs until subscribers are ready to spend again and upgrade their broadband services.
