Week in research: Danish 100 Mbps broadband rises; Class 5 switch replacement drives IMS

Danish broadband speeds are rising fast: In its "Broadband Survey 2011," the Danish telecom regulator National IT and Telecom Agency revealed that by the end of the first half of 2011, 38 percent of the country's households could get 100 Mbps download broadband speeds, up 13 percent from 2010. Ongoing expansion of fiber networks and existing HFC networks helped drive up the speeds during this period. At the same time, the regulator reported that upstream rates rose, with the availability of 10 Mbps upload speeds increasing from 45 to 56 percent, while 95 percent of residents and businesses could get 10 Mbps download speeds, up 3 percent from last year. Article

Class 5 switch replacements to drive IMS equipment sales: While IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) has always been a subject of hype and uncertainty, an Infonetics report argues that a number of Class 5 replacements being conducted by major domestic and international Tier 1 carriers in China and Germany will drive 50 percent growth in IMS equipment sales in 2011. There are three tiers of customer driving this trend: international providers like China Telecom, China Unicom, and Deutsche Telekom conducting Class 5 replacement projects; AT&T (NYSE: T) and NTT (NYSE: NTT) ramping up their Class 5 switching gear; cable operators launching more IP-based services; and finally wireless operators like Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and Metro PCS launching IMS as part of their respective migrations to LTE. "IMS market growth rates to continue to follow an atypical curve as projects ramp and taper and new ones pick up across fixed-line and mobile networks," expects Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research. From a vendor point of view, Nokia Siemens Networks saw a big gain in the emerging IMS call session control function (CSCF) server market in 3Q11, followed by Ericsson and Huawei. Release

Infonetics CSCF vendors 2011

More users are picking up video calls: While video calling via free services like Skype has been done mainly by consumers from their PCs or laptops, the service is becoming more present on mobile devices and traditional TVs. According to new NPD In-Stat research, the total number of active video calling users will surpass 380 million in 2015, up from 63 million in 2010. News release