Recession leads to sluggish global broadband growth

Be the first to comment | 4I like it!
September 9, 2009, 09:01 AM —  IDG News Service — 

Broadband growth is still reeling from the economic downturn, but there are also tentative signs of a recovery, according to market research company Point Topic.

The number of worldwide broadband subscribers grew by only 3 percent when comparing the first and the second quarters of 2009, said CEO Oliver Johnson. This marks the lowest growth Point Topic has seen since it began conducting research in 1999 and the number of broadband subscribers added between those quarters was the lowest since 2005, he said.

But the fact that the number of broadband subscribers is still growing says a lot about its appeal, and there are some signs of recovery in markets such as Japan and Australia, according to Johnson. By the end of 2010 the total number of broadband subscribers will reach 500 million, he said.

Eastern Europe and Latin America showed the biggest growth. These markets still have low broadband penetration but their late start allowed both regions to learn from the mistakes that have been made in other countries, Johnson said.

Fiber is continuing to eat into the market share of DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and cable, and has been the success story during the last couple of months, according to Johnson. The number of fiber lines has grown by 24.5 percent in the last year, compared to about 15 percent for DSL and cable, he said

But fiber is still the third most popular in total numbers. The global technology market shares was 64 percent for DSL, 21 percent for cable and 13 percent for fiber.

The growing number of homes with fiber access also goes hand in hand with higher IPTV penetration, which grew by 56 percent between the second quarter in 2008 and 2009, according to Johnson.

IDG News Service

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

Point Topic

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly

claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century

pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?

sjvn
64-bits of protection?

jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith

mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace