Alcatel-Lucent said this week that it had now reached 10 million VDSL2 vectoring line shipments. That number has doubled since the middle of last year and puts Alcatel on a run rate of 5 million every six months and rising.
The shipment of vectoring capable lines has proved something of a stumbling block to counting vectored lines, since a vectoring line card also needs to be installed at the DSLAM and initiated before the benefits of 100 Mbps vectored lines are possible. Most operators are installing these lines without yet introducing a service, planning to add it later when enough of the lines are enabled for such a service.
Which is why Alcatel also rolled out Proximus, the new name for Belgian incumbent telco Belgacom, to celebrate alongside Alcatel, saying that it was the first operator in the world to install a nationwide VDSL2 vectoring network, one year ago. Alcatel says that it has been shipping vectored capable line cards for three years now and it installed its 10 millionth line last quarter. Proximus has just 1.27 million broadband lines across Belgium’s 4.4 million or so homes and struggles against a strong cable contingent.
Alcatel-Lucent says it now has 27 VDSL2 vectoring customers, including Israel’s Bezeq, KPN in the Netherlands, Telecom Argentina, Telecom Italia, TE Data in Egypt and NBN in Australia, and another 65 commercial trials of the technology ongoing which may result in shipments.
While rivals have mostly not published shipment details, because for the most part they were shipping significantly later than Alcatel and in smaller numbers, Adtran claims to have shipped about half this number, passing the 5 million landmark some time last year (we reckon it must be on 6 million or more by now). The last count we heard from Huawei was some time ago and was only for 1.4 million lines.
It is likely that the market is already at 20 million lines shipped, which would put Alcatel ahead of its best position in ADSL, at around 50%, but as we say, there are a lot of chips out there not being used with vectoring, which are vectoring capable, and the real number may be a lot higher, ready for a service launch as yet unannounced.
Lines in vectored service is certainly way below that 10 million figure Alcatel is touting, perhaps less than 2 million. Proximus currently only offers a 70 Mbps with VDSL2 vectoring and has yet to move to 100 Mbps or the 200 Mbps that bonded lines may allow the technology to reach.