Even in light of the current global economic downturn the market for broadband in Australia has seen a significant level of grown since 2008.

Based on new research from research firm Telsyte the number of subscribers, excluding the 2 Million 3G based users of mobile broadband services 5.9 million were found to be accessing the internet over broadband and provided revenue of $3.25, which is a year-on-year increase of 12.4 percent.

A market analyst for Telsyte said “DSL dominates the market, and we expect its dominance to continue even with the ultimate outcome of the NBN unclear at this stage. The introduction of Naked DSL has certainly caused market disruption, with PSTN poised to decline further as Naked DSL with VoIP bundled offerings is making headway in winning subscriber confidence.”

The main winners of 2008 were Soul/TPG and iiNet according to the findings from Telsyte. The analyst said “iiNet and Soul/TPG experienced exceptional growth last year, close to doubling their subscriber numbers and service revenue, mostly due to iiNet’s acquisition of Westnet and the merger between Soul and TPG. We expect iiNet and TPG, both early to market with Naked DSL and content services, to be able to sustain their organic growth in 2009, as will other ‘Naked’ ISPs like Internode and Adam Internet.”

Through becoming MVNO partners, convergence in the telecommunications industries and the potential positive factors of the NBN, opportunities to formulate development strategies and increase ARPU were identified in this new report from Telsyte.

The analyst said “FTTP will open a whole new market for ISPs in delivering premium content and highly targeted promotional materials to consumers. Both the traditional advertising funded model, and a user subscription model, will be applicable and the technology is certainly available now. From a marketing perspective, the effectiveness of traditional media messages in reaching target segments has declined significantly in the past few years due to information overload. ISPs must look to harness the power of broadband to monetise content offerings by providing more relevant, personal and contextualised multimedia offerings to Australians. ISPs who learn to do this best, are those most likely to succeed in transitioning their newly won customers from DSL services to NBN services, once the FTTP infrastructure is in place.”

Source - www.smarthouse.com.au