A survey by Business Data Israel (BDI) of the Israeli Internet market published today puts Israel in first place in the proportion of high-speed Internet hookups. 50% of Israeli households have high-speed Internet, compared with 22% in the US, and only 10% in Europe.
On the other hand, Israel trails behind other countries in the speed of its hookups. 85% of Israeli households with high-speed Internet have 750 Kbps, while packages with 1.5-2 Mbps are relatively rare. The average high-speed Internet surfing speed in Germany, for example, is 5 Mbps. 940,000 Israeli households have a high-speed Internet hookup, compared with 640,000 at the end of 2003. 84% of those with high-speed Internet hookups are not religiously observant, 14% are religiously observant, and 25% are haredi (ultra-Orthodox).
The study indicates that, as of the end of 2004, Israel had 2.8 million Internet users, compared with 2.5 million at the end of 2003, and 1.3 million at the end of 2000. “After meteoric Internet growth in recent years, the sector is showing clear signs of saturation. This is reflected in the attitude of infrastructure and service providers, who have begun focusing on customer retention and expanding revenue from current subscribers, rather than on recruiting new customers,” BDI says.
The study also reported that 67% of users were connected to Bezeq’s (TASE: BZEQ) ADSL infrastructure, compared with 33% to cable infrastructure. At the same time, while Bezeq’s ADSL technology is more common, providing a downloading speed of up to 3 Mbps and a maximum uploading speed of 150 Kbps, other countries have other DSL-based technologies, such as HDSL, SDSL, and VDSL, which can reach downloading speeds of over 40 Mbps.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on February 20, 2005