BROADBAND TO BE AUSTRALIAN TELECOM MARKET'S NEW WAVE:ANALYST.

SYDNEY, May 1 Asia Pulse - Broadband will be the next cash cow for the telecommunications industry, said independent analyst Paul Budde, adding that telecom companies that focus too much on mobile or narrow band networks will see their revenues suffer.

Mr Budde, speaking on industry trends in Sydney today, said the Australia telecommunications market would expand to a $A90 billion ($US47.84 billion) market in 2010 from a $38 billion market in 2001.

Broadband - the transmission of large amounts of electronic information including telephone calls, television and the internet, often over phone lines, cables or satellite - would take $81 billion of that, he said.

Mr Budde said the telecommunications market was currently dominated by commodities-based products, and telcos would need to develop niche products to help grow revenues.

"The nature of commodities is prices are going down, margins are going down," he said.

"On the other side there is this value added element - value added services need to be bought to the network in order to have these extra margins."

He said the broadband network offered telcos more opportunities to build such value-added applications, than mobile networks or narrow band networks.