availability subscribers grew 57.8% in 2004. In February 2005, the number in G7 Projected of DSL subscribers worldwide passed the 100 m milestone. Canada France Germany Italy Japan n/av = not available. Source: OECD Communications Outlook 2005, Table 4.12. 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Source: DSL Forum/Point Topic fibers.org http://fibers.org/ articles/fs/9/4/2/1/FSEdsl1%5F04%2D05. rate enhancements for uplinks and downlinks (HSPUS and HSPDS). However, when examined closely, 3G mobile seems to be an expensive technology, although capital costs are now falling for outside plant networks. But the costs of the multimedia systems, specifically the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), could add additional billions of dollars per network. Start-up costs are high for such a system to give 95% coverage in a fairly densely populated OECD-type economy. Initial capital and capitalised operating expenses pre-launch can approach USD 10 billion, as estimated in Table 2.14. After 10 years of capital write-offs of the original investment, the cost per subscriber with Opex is still USD 545 without the licence costs, while the (operator-subsidised) cost per call at launch can be as high USD 18, as shown for one example of a UMTS network for an OECD country in the table. Opex costs may be higher if more is spent on customer acquisition, especially handset subsidy. The emerging technology mix in infrastructure in the short/medium term In consequence, in the OECD community we can expect a mix of competing infrastructures, technologies and operators to continue over the coming decade at least. The expected mix is shown in Figure 2.9. However there may be other technologies that could deliver both local loop and long distance at even lower cost. The cost base is such that the situation depicted in the figure above will not last forever, especially with new technologies developed in the NICs and feeding back into the OECD community. Already China is launching its own form of 3G mobile, TD-SCDMA, and we can expect new INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2