All of these make it expensive to deploy and account for the slowness with which it has reached the field. Some of these problems will disappear as new generations of DSL come to market over the next year or two, thus increasing the market that can be physically targeted and lowering the cost of deployment. Thus, it is reasonable to foresee that at some point during 2000, DSL deployment will kick into high gear, which I would define as passing the million customer mark that cable-modems are already approaching. By that point, cable companies will have to face the fact that telcos can provide a product that is equally attractive in terms of speed and price to cable-modems. At that point the pressure will be on cable to open access to its network, a task that faces some real technology barriers.
Cable networks are shared pipes.
Because they are shared, it becomes difficult to control the actual speed any user will enjoy when multiple users are on-line. There is today no network management system that can do that bandwidth-allocation job when many ISPs are providing service over the cable network directly to the end user during periods when the network is carrying a full load. It is likely that such an operating system could be developed for cable networks, but it is not here today. There are many who insist that the cable industry is motivated to limit or control access to its network not only by technical difficulties but by anti-competitive motives. The potential for that certainly exists given the vertical integration in this industry and the small number of horizontal players providing local access.