Point Topic has released its latest 'World Broadband Statistics Report' for the third quarter of 2008, highlighting a worldwide growth in broadband subscribers of 4.15% between Q2 and Q3 2008. This rise represents an increase in broadband growth over Q2, which grew by just 3.92% (total 382.4m).

Global broadband population penetration stood at 6.9% in Q3 2008, up 4.5% over the previous quarter when it was 6.6%. By comparison the global 'household' (family homes etc.) penetration was 25.3% in Q3 2008, up 4.1% over Q2. The regional share of broadband bubscribers is now as follows:


Meanwhile the choice of broadband technology has seen little change, with uptake continuing to increase at a broadly even pace. DSL (ADSL, SDSL etc.) still dominates with a 64.5% (257m) market share. However next-gen Fibre (FTTx) services continued to experience the highest quarterly growth, up 5.95% from 45.3m in Q2 2008. This appears to be slightly slower than the 6.91% reported in Q2:


The growth of subscribers using all three technologies was positive, but the quarterly rate of growth compared to that in Q2 was down for FTTx connections and up for cable modem and DSL. FTTx growth was down 1.13% from 7.08% reported in Q2, while cable modem growth was up 0.47% from 3.41% and DSL was up 0.86% from 2.81%.

The top 10 broadband countries by subscriber size has gone through some changes, what with the small matter of China taking the top spot from the USA! Sadly the UK has also been pushed down from 5th to 6th place by France:


It's interesting to see that, with some small exceptions, the slow down witnessed since the end of 2007 appears to have rebounded slightly. This is curious but mainly an indicator of growth in new markets as opposed to the saturated older ones.