Fueled by ongoing deployments by both domestic U.S. carriers including AT&T (NYSE: T) and CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and EMEA carriers including BT (NYSE: BT) and Telekom Austria, VDSL port shipments rose 50 percent in the first quarter of 2011, according to a Dell'Oro Group report.
When broken out, shipments to EMEA accounted for over 60 percent of worldwide shipments followed by North America which accounted for a quarter of total VDSL shipments.
"With ADSL being a mature technology with limited bandwidth capabilities, many service providers are upgrading their networks with high-speed VDSL or PON equipment to enable new, high-bandwidth intensive services such as IPTV," said Tam Dell'Oro, President of Dell'Oro Group.
Not surprisingly, the service provider gamut of VDSL port shipments is being driven by AT&T's ongoing Fiber to the Node (FTTN) U-verse rollout.
Outside of AT&T, a number of smaller operators including notably TDS Telecom (NYSE: TDS), Qwest (now CenturyLink) and Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN) are also deploying VDSL2 in select areas of their respective network footprints.
By deploying VDSL2, Windstream, for one, is delivering high end speed tiers of 20 Mbps and above, but on average the ILEC is seeing the majority of their customers use about 4 Mbps.
"We're deploying VDSL2 in our markets and it's allowed us to offer 20 Mbps and above," said Jeff Gardner, CEO of Windstream in a previous interview with FierceTelecom. "In our biggest markets we can get 12 Mbps to nearly half of our customers. You have to keep in mind that most people on average are only buying 4 Mbps so we have a lot of headroom if our customers want a Netflix or a different video experience."
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