Spanish cable operator joins the growing European Docsis 3.0 club that's piling broadband pressure on the telcos

September 19, 2008

2 Min Read
ONO! Another Docsis 3.0 Story!

Europe's cable operators are piling the pressure on their telco counterparts by deploying EuroDocsis 3.0 technology and launching broadband services that DSL players can't currently match.

Following Liberty Global Inc. (Nasdaq: LBTY)'s announcement earlier this week that it has launched a 120 Mbit/s broadband service in the Netherlands, competing against the DSL and emerging FTTH services offered by incumbent KPN Telecom NV (NYSE: KPN), Spanish cable operator has announced the impending launch of its own high-speed Internet service that utilizes the capabilities of EuroDocsis 3.0 technology. (See Liberty Takes 120 Mbit/s to the Dutch.)

Having trialled the service in the Spanish city of Valladolid earlier this year, ONO is for the commercial launch of a 100 Mbit/s downstream, 5 Mbit/s upstream service for €80 per month (including voice service), and a 50 Mbit/s downstream, 3 Mbit/s upstream service for €60 per month (including voice service), in Madrid starting Oct. 15.

About 700,000 homes will be within reach of the service initially. Adding TV services to the packages will increase the monthly prices to €95 and €75 respectively.

The cable operator, which says it has invested €8 billion in its network, and which currently has around 1.3 million broadband customers, can only offer 25 Mbit/s downstream and 1 Mbit/s upstream currently.

With the launch of the new services, though, the company claims it is the only service provider that can deliver such high access speeds on a large scale.

Spanish incumbent telco Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF) is set to launch residential FTTH services soon, but initially the downstream bandwidth looks set to be limited to 30 Mbit/s, the same as its initial business service offerings that use its currently limited fiber access network.

Ultimately, though, Telefónica, which has more than 5 million broadband customers throughout Spain, plans to offer broadband speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s using GPON technology. (See Euro Telcos Ramp Up IPTV Subs.)

In addition to Spain and the Netherlands, Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED) in the U.K. and Numericable-SFR in France (with pre-Docsis 3.0 gear) are putting pressure on their telco rivals by using EuroDocsis 3.0 technology to offer increasingly higher broadband speeds. (See Virgin Media Sees Silver Lining and Netgear Rises to the Wideband Challenge.)

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading

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