Global Broadband Facts, Figures and Trends
By Andrew McLaughlin |
April 13th, 2006
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New global broadband penetration data was released by the OECD and the findings show a number of interesting trends (via IP Democracy). The US still lags in terms of total broadband penetration at 12th place, but has the largest number of subscribers at 49.3M total. Cable is the largest provider of high speed internet in the US by ~3:2 over DSL. The US and Canada are the only 2 countries where cable is the dominate access method. DSL technology has the advantage almost everywhere else and 62% of all broadband connections. Other access technologies, including wireless, satellite and fiber, account for only 7% of the worldwide broadband connections but appear to be among the fastest growing segments.
Korea has one of the more compelling penetration stats with just over 25% of all residents having access to broadband and is second overall behind Iceland. Of course Iceland’s 26% penetration represents only 78,000 subscribers.
A significant statistic worth noting is the access technology switchover effect in Korea. Their broadband growth is being enabled in large part due to the availability of fiber-to-the premise (FTTP) connections. The phenomenal growth rates are coming at the expense of DSL and cable connections. Fiber-based broadband connections grew 52.4% during 2005 in Korea. This switchover effect is marked by the net loss of DSL (-3.3%) and cable (-1.7%) subscribers during the year! This should be sweet news to AT&T and Verizon who are both investing heavily in FTTx technologies.
These stats are always interesting to me since it’s so hard to imagine life without broadband access. Yet it is very clear that there are large segments of the population, both domestically and abroad, that do not have access. The good news is that the growth of the internet will continue for some time to come.
Filed in: Broadband