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Global Broadband subscribers on the rise
Wednesday 28 March 2007 18:32:45 by John Hunt

Point Topic has today published its analysis for the global DSL market up to Q4 2006. These latest figures put the total number of broadband subscribers at 281.3 million, a 31% increase over 2005. France achieved the highest growth in subscribers within the 'top 10 broadband countries' (based on number of lines). The UK saw a 33% increase, slightly above the global average, from 9,828,900 to 13,116,600 subscribers. The breakdown of the top 10 is as follows:

Country	Number of broadband lines Q4 2005	Number of broadband lines Q4 2006
USA	46,110,191	57,330,216
China	37,504,000	51,899,000
Japan	22,647,830	26,095,919
Germany	10,706,648	14,660,084
South Korea	12,199,666	14,042,698
France	9,958,086	13,983,900
UK	9,828,900	13,116,600
Italy	6,977,404	8,826,803
Canada	6,854,994	7,876,487
Spain	4,853,388	6,726,756

The order of the top 10 has stayed fairly constant to last year with Germany just managing to squeeze in front of South Korea, and Italy jumping in front of Canada. Also to note is how users are connecting to broadband services, with DSL accounting for a 65.7% market share and fibre, encompassing fibre to the home as well as to other nearby distribution points (FTTx), 10%.

[ Topic: Broadband | 6 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by CARPETBURN over 5 years ago
The UK when it comes to broadband with its terrible speeds silly Fair use schemes etc etc shouldnt even really be in the same table let alone mentioned in the same gasp of air as some of the countrys in this list. Our so called broadband compared to some in that list is like dial-up.

Posted by uniquename over 5 years ago
Trouble is this table is like the satisfaction/complaints one, no account taken of national population. Two things would change if it was expressed proportionally, the positions and the percentage changes.

Posted by jelv over 5 years ago
Taking population figures from http://www.photius.com/rankings/population/population_2006_0.html and calculating the percentage we rank above many of those above us in the table.

Posted by giverny over 5 years ago
Yes, would make more sense to include number of lines as % of population, also perhaps a separate table to rank average available line speeds.

Posted by harryhound1 over 5 years ago
South Korea is the most impressive: approximately one connection for every 4 inhabitants ?

(It reminds of when Estonia joined the European Song Contest and almost half the telepnones in the country called up to vote).

Posted by Mikejc over 5 years ago
What is perhaps even more interesting than the current level of connections, is the relative growth rates. Top of that league table is France with 40% year on year, followed by Spain 39% and China on 38%. The UK is in the middle on 33%, ahead of Italy 27% and the USA on 24% with Japan, South Korea and Canada all trailing at 15%.

If these relative growth rates are held for next year then China will have taken over from the USA as top of the installations league table, whilst UK will have overtaken South Korea to end up one place higher at no. 6.