 from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Telecom Market Segments Telecom Market Segments Timeline Highlights 1963: 81 million subscriber lines in United States; 159 million worldwide. 1966: First optical cable used for voice transmission. 1976: First digital switch installed by AT&T. 1984: AT&T is divested; at time of divestiture it has more than one million employees and is worth $155 billion. 1988: First transatlantic optical cable is completed. 1989: 138 million subscriber lines in United States; 496 million worldwide. 1991: Bell Labs develops photonic (optical) switching capability. 2000: International voice traffic quadruples in 10 years to 132.7 billion minutes-but revenue only doubles to $70 billion. 2002: U.S. residential cable modem subscribers: 7.7 million; DSL: 4.4 million; data traffic passes voice at 200,000 TB/day; also in 2002, IP surpasses all other traffic in volume. that the incumbent telephone companies stop focusing on numbers of access lines and preservation of minutes of use, and start focusing on preservation of customers. That is the only winning measure. Contrary to popular belief, the most significant challenge faced by the ILECs is cable, not the threat posed by the CLECs. Cable companies are beginning to take on a more strategic role in the industry at large. After years of competing with satellite providers for "eyeshare," cable providers are finally beginning to enjoy price stability for the services they provide over their almost completely digital broadband networks. Furthermore, they are beginning to offer a variety of value-added services in addition to their traditional distributive entertainment content, such as high- speed cable modem Internet access and Internet-based telephony-both of which have become significant revenue producers as well as disruptive forces among their new competitors, the ILECs. Furthe