Analyst: Telcos no threat to cable

Sanford Bernstein Senior Analyst Craig Moffett opines that cable companies face no near term threat from telcos. Moffett is particularly dismissive of AT&T, which he sees unable to match broadband throughput speeds provided by cable companies and unlikely close the gap. Moffett also echos my own observation earlier this year that customers will find DSL increasingly inadequate as they download higher amounts of video content:

But while AT&T may upgrade 40 percent of its DSL plant to fiber in order to bring faster high-speed data service to its customers, some 60 percent of its network won’t be upgraded, Moffett projects. That means that AT&T will still be competing at a maximum standard DSL bit rate of 768 Kbps while cable operators offer substantially higher bit-rates, a disparity that could become more of a competitive challenge for AT&T as consumers download more video online through services like YouTube.