Washington-based research firm TeleGeography says that “while falling prices
and overcapacity continue to plague the industry … New demand growth has
begun to outpace price erosion on many city-to-city routes.”
That would be encouraging news to long-haul service providers like Bell,
Spring, and (back from the dead) 360Networks. It also points to a more
promising future for the equipment vendors, like Nortel Networks and Lucent
Technologies, that those providers buy their gear from.
In its study
of international bandwidth, TeleGeography says prices on most long-haul
routes in the U.S. and Europe fell by 10 percent to 30 percent in 2003 while
new deployments of Internet capacity–the key indicator of bandwidth
demand–increased almost 60 percent.
“Revenues aren't necessarily skyrocketing,” said TeleGeography analyst
Stephan Beckert. “However, these new data do suggest that bandwidth demand
is strong enough to offset recent price declines.”