Posted: 09th Jul, 2009 By: MarkJ
New research from
Futuresource Consulting has revealed that the global household penetration of fixed broadband services will break the 500 Million subscribers barrier next year. That's hardly surprising given that, according to Point Topic figures, the world had 429.2m subscribers to related services in Q1-2009 and 412.6m in Q4-2008 (+4.02% growth).
Patrik Pfandler, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource Consulting, said:
“More than 60% of all fixed broadband households on the planet are connecting using xDSL, where digital data transmission takes place over a local telephone network; while cable accounts for a little over 20%.
And although markets in many developed countries are becoming saturated, alternative hot spots are starting to emerge: our research shows Africa and the Middle East will experience spikes this year that equate to 33% growth.
Longer term, India is the country to watch out for over the next four years. With one of the lowest household penetration rates for fixed broadband at the moment - at just over 2%, or five million subscribers – the market is projected to grow five-fold by 2013, to almost 25 million lines.”
Japan and South Korea lead the way when it comes to broadband speeds, with average download speeds of approximately 30Mbps each. Looking to Europe, Sweden comes out on top, averaging 14Mbps last year. In the US, the national average achieved last year was just 2.7Mbps.
Here in the UK Ofcom has reported the average speed to be 3.6Mbps, though some anecdotal testing suggests the figure might now be closer to 4.3Mbps. Futuresource Consulting doesn't say how it accumulated its information, which it calls “
proprietary information that belongs to Futuresource”, although the data is available in far more detailed form from many other publicly sources such as the OECD and Point Topic (
Q1-2009 World Broadband Stats).