Total number of fixed broadband subscribers will rise to 501 million at the end of 2014 and about 106 million will subscribe to services delivered via fibre, according to a new market data released by ABI Research.
The number of fixed broadband subscribers totaled more than 422 million at the end of 2009, a 9% increase from 2008, and fiber broadband subscribers totaled 44 million at the end of 2009, according to the report.
Serene Fong, industry analyst at ABI Research, said: “Broadband penetration continues to increase since more service providers are offering triple-play services and driving down access prices.”
Among the three broadband technologies, 65% of worldwide fixed broadband consumers subscribe to DSL, 25% to cable and 11% to fiber broadband services. The number of fiber broadband subscribers shows a compound annual growth rate of 20% from 2008 to 2014.
According to ABI Research, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest fibre broadband penetration, followed by North America. Asia-Pacific represents nearly 84% of worldwide fibre broadband subscribers. South Korea and Japan have the highest fibre broadband penetration and NTT is the largest fibre broadband operator with approximately 12 million subscribers.
Western Europe had only about two million fiber broadband subscribers, a very low penetration compared to North America and Asia Pacific, the firm said.
Khin Sandi Lynn, research associate at ABI Research, said: “File sharing, music downloads, IPTV, online gaming and video conferencing are all acting to increase the user demand for high speed Internet. The number of fiber broadband subscribers is increasing with growing popularity of these services.”
