The Broadband Forum has revealed that were 466.95 million broadband customers in the world at the end of 2009, which is up from 451 Million in Q3-2009. This represents a healthy annual growth of 14.21%, with the strongest rise coming from Q4-2009. Point Topic recently estimated that the world could top 740 Million by 2014.

The Asian market showed the strongest growth with China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam being the most significant contributors to Asia’s broadband dominance in 2009. Asia now accounts for 39% of the broadband market (plus 32% of the IPTV market). Europe accounts for 30.61%, Americas 27.24% and the Middle East/Africa is on just 2.94%.

Internet TV ( IPTV ) services had a banner year, adding more than 10.8 million subscribers (compared to 9.4 million in 2008). By year-end 2009, there were more than 33 million IPTV customers- an annual increase of 47%. Each quarter was stronger in 2009 than its corresponding 2008 quarter, and fourth quarter posted the strongest growth at 11%.

UPDATE 1:47pm

The breakdown of broadband subscribers by technology shows that the take-up of broadband services using all three technologies continues to increase. DSL ( ADSL , ADSL2+ etc. ) remains the most popular by far, used by over 64% of the global broadband market (302.75 million lines). This was followed by the use of Cable Modem ( DOCSIS etc. ) with 20.37% of the total (95.12 million lines) and FTTx with a 12.24% share of the market (57.17 million lines).

The UK has the largest Cable Modem market in Western Europe ( Virgin Media ) with 3.85 million lines, followed by Germany with 2.4 million lines, the Netherlands (2.38 million lines) and Spain (1.86 million lines) and Belgium (1.26 million lines).