The latest research from Point Topic highlights how global broadband lines stood at 150.5m as of 31st Dec 2004, with a record 50m increase for the whole of 2004. Unsurprisingly the USA and xDSL technology still dominates.

The USA remains the world's largest broadband country with 33.9m lines. Although China is in second place, it is continuing to gain ground, and added over 6.6m lines in 2H 2004.

Cable modems and other broadband services grew slightly faster than DSL in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, largely due to the growth in 'FTTx', usually fibre-to-the-building, particularly in China and Japan.

Canada is one of the few places outside the Asia-Pacific region where cable modems showed a higher growth rate than DSL during the year, 9.5% against 8.5%. In the USA, on the other hand, the stronghold of cable modem technology, the DSL base grew by 20.1% to add 2.3m lines. Cable added a few more lines, at 2.5m, but this was only a 13.8% increase in the installed base.

DSL has a majority 62% of world broadband market share compared to a 38% share made up of cable modem and other technologies.

The rapid growth of broadband in Europe has carried some countries to amongst the highest take-up levels worldwide. The Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland and Belgium all have over 16 broadband lines for every 100 people. They are four out of the top eight major countries on this benchmark. Other Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland are all over the 12 per 100 mark.

The biggest European countries, France, Germany, Italy and the UK, are all in the 8 to 12 lines per 100 range, along with a number of others. The EU's new accession countries to the East are now starting to move up the take-up scale, but one or two are still below the 1 line per 100 level, as are all the other countries of the former Soviet Union.