"The slowdown in broadband deployment is real. And in fact none of the numbers that were projected are actually going to come into fruition."
Joseph Hartnett, acting CEO at U.S. Robotics. The company makes boxes consumers need for cable or DSL Internet connections. So why the slowdown?
"I think there are many reasons. The investment that was made. The capital that is required to provide that access to the individuals. Also the pricing. Pricing is not profitable yet for a lot of the providers of broadband access."
But for consumers... the cost of high speed access is often double what they pay to connect by modem. And so Hartnett believes his company's modem business will stay healthy for some time to come...
"Our modem business is profitable. We're doing well. Our market share has never been stronger."
But sooner or later... that will change. High speed access adaptation may have slowed down... .but it is still the future...
"We do believe that the deployment of broadband is going to in fact take place. We feel that it's probably going to be at a much slower pace than was anticipated, however, over the next year or two we're going to start to see increases in that. As broadband is, in fact, deployed... we're going to more need for the home networking as well."
So homes with multiple PCs and new Internet devices will be able to share that high speed connection. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.