Telecompaper

Global broadband subscribers grew by 16.6 million lines in Q1, to a total 429.2 million, according to industry body the Broadband Forum in its latest broadband and IPTV statistics report compiled by Point Topic. The last quarter showed growth slightly higher than the previous three month period, as twenty countries grew by 10 percent or more. In terms of technology, DSL continues to be the most popular broadband access technology with 64.6 percent of all lines, although fibre grew by more than 3 million lines to reflect a 12.4 percent share of the market, while wireless added over 1 million lines to a total of 5.58 million. The number of IPTV subscribers approached 24 million after 9.8 percent quarterly growth, with expansion mainly in Europe and North America. Western Europe is the largest IPTV market, with 11.4 million users, up 9.75 percent from December. Western Europe is also the largest broadband region, with 108.1 million lines at the end of March, up 2.63 percent. Eastern Europe showed a 5.75 percent improvement to reach well over 23.5 million broadband users. South and east Asia is the second-largest market with 99 million subscribers, up 6.03 percent from Q4, followed closely by North America with 93.5 million broadband lines, up 3.87 percent. Asia Pacific showed the slowest quarterly growth of 1.82 percent, to finish March with 64.4 million broadband users. The country with the most broadband users is China, at 88 million lines, followed by the US at 84 million. The top ten countries for broadband lines account for 310 million of the total connections worldwide.