Study Says Midsized Businesses Looking for Broadband Connectivity in Key Locations, DSL a Likely Suspect for Service

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Feb. 1 -- US midsized companies (100-999 employees) are expected to show growing demand for DSL services in the year 2001, according to Cahners In-Stat Group.
A recent study by the high-tech research firm shows that though the majority of main and branch office locations used some sort of broadband access at the end of 2000, as much as 20 percent of them still used traditional dial-up services. Looking into 2001, these customers expect to migrate away from dial-up as quickly as possible to affordable DSL services across locations, namely their smaller sites, and may possibly show less demand for traditional T1 services in the coming year as a result.

"Midsized businesses have been consistently fragmenting into a network of smaller locations for the last few years," said Kneko Burney, director of eBusiness Infrastructure & Services for In-Stat. "Because of this trend, these firms' demand for high-end connectivity services is expected to fall in favor of more cost effective and appropriate DSL services. This is actually an opportunity for service providers to not only offer DSL services for this market's smaller locations, but to also begin bundling other related services, such as VPNs, remote network management and possibly hosted applications with this type of core connectivity. This type of strategy will certainly be key in sustaining long-term relationships with these evolving customers."

The report, "All Business is eBusiness: Internet Infrastructure, Access Technologies & the Build-up of Commerce Capabilities in the Middle Market," includes forecasts of middle market spending on Internet infrastructure broken down by category and size of business. It also features survey data examining middle market Internet access technologies, end-user Internet application use, propensity to outsource Web site functionality, and who are the Internet decision-makers. To purchase this report, or for more information, please visit http://www.instat.com/catalog/cat-ms-middle.htm#mt0004eb or contact Chris Kissel at 480.609.4531; ckissel@instat.com. The report price is $3,995.