DSL shipments worldwide increased 14 percent in 2007 to a record 102 million ports, according to a report by Dittberner. DSL port shipments grew 5 percent in the fourth quarter. The main growth drivers for DSL this past year were the addition of 15 million new subscribers in China, MDU deployments in Taiwan and Japan and the unbundling of loops by alternative service providers in Western Europe. North America had the fastest growth in 2006, but in 2007, it was the only region to slow, with shipments dropping 27 percent. CALA had the fastest growth with shipments up 79 percent. APAC grew 27 percent while EMEA grew 8 percent. Of the top ten suppliers, Huawei, ZTE and ZyXel increased their market shares in 2007.
About 77 percent of all DSLAM ports shipped were shipped on IP-DSLAMs. Alcatel-Lucent edged out Huawei for ports shipped on IP-DSLAMs, but ZyXel remained the leader in the number of DSLAMs shipped. VDSL shipments will grow by 12 percent and reach 8 million ports in 2008. Dittberner expects that future DSL growth will become more dominated by Asian markets. This will quicken the consolidation by the top three vendors, which includes Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei Technologies and ZTE, whose market share has risen from 61 percent to 68 percent of the market in the past year.
