Posted: 29th Mar, 2006 By: MarkJ
Point Topic has published its analysis of world broadband subscriber statistics for 2005. They show a world total of over 209.3m subscribers, which is a 37% growth from 153.3m at the end of 2004. The UK held one of the strongest annual growth rates @ 61.12%!:
Whereas the third quarter of 2005 showed an increase in the actual number of lines which was definitely higher than in previous quarters, the growth rate in the fourth quarter dropped, returning to the expected average of 8%. While 12.4m lines were added in Q1 2005, 13.1m in Q2 2005, 15.1m in Q3 2005, Q4 2005 showed only a small further gain with 15.5m being added. Quarterly growth in percentage terms remained steady, ranging from 7.9% to 8.4% during 2005.
It highlights that despite exceptionally low penetration rates in many regions and the potential for broadband lines too growth rapidly, the global trend is stable without any noticeable sign of either slowing down or accelerating.
Western Europe [HAS] almost caught up with North America as the most high-penetration region, but is still growing considerably faster - 47% in 2005 as against 27%. Unless broadband growth in Western Europe goes through a very sharp slowdown, it will soon be well ahead of North America in take-up.
Technology Trends
Cable and alternative technologies are gradually losing out to DSL worldwide. Whereas in 2004, cable operators and other technology providers still had a market share of 36.2%, in 2005 this figure declined to 33.7%. DSL has continued to pull ahead of other technologies, growing by 42.08%, while cable modem and other technologies achieved a growth rate of 27.2% from Q4 2004.
The DSL share of world broadband lines is now up from 63.9 % in Q4 2004 to a dominant 66.2%. FTTx operators provide 8.75% of lines and cable operators 24.29%.
"Top Ten" Broadband Countries
The USA remains the largest broadband market with over 43.4m lines. China comes in second place reaching 37.5m lines and Japan is third with 22.1m lines.
South Korea is some way behind with just over 12.2 m lines, but is now being gained on by the bigger Western European countries - Germany (10.7m), France (9.9m) and the UK (9.8m).
Year 2005 ended as it had begun. In the 4Q04, Germany was forging ahead with a small advantage of 150,000 lines over France with 6.7m broadband lines herself and the UK with 6.1m lines. Over the year, and thanks to the success of LLU during the second half, Germany kept in the lead. The UK narrowed the gap from 660,000 to 130,000 lines but was finally unable to catch up with France. Point Topic was too pessimistic about French growth in the last quarter when it announced that the UK had probably overtaken France by the end of 2005.We've highlighted the most interesting pieces above, yet anybody wanting to read the full shebang should follow the link from PT's official news and view the detailed report -
HERE.