Global Broadband Market Grows by 9.3%

London (PRWEB) December 17, 2004

Latest research from Quantum Web suggests the number of broadband subscribers across the world rose to 128 million with 9.30 percent growth over the previous quarter.

The Middle East-Africa region – with nearly 1 million broadband subscribers - has fuelled the fastest quarterly growth with 11.06 percent followed by Europe (9.22%) and the Americas (9.85%). Asia registered the lowest quarterly growth at 8.46 percent but still remains the world’s largest broadband market with 53 million subscribers. Subscriber penetration in the Americas has reached 41.76 million and in Europe 32.8 million.

Figure 1 Installed quarterly growth per region (percent)

Figure 2 Broadband subscribers per region (million)

France with 5.27 million broadband subscribers followed by Germany (5.26 million) and the UK (5.077 million) were the biggest broadband markets in Europe at the end of Q3 2004.

DSL Service Providers added more than 7.8 million new subscribers, representing 72 per cent of the net broadband additions for the quarter versus 2.5 million of cable (23%) and nearly 600,000 using other broadband access technologies (5%). This marks another successful quarter for DSL Service Providers compared to cable operators.

At the end of Q3 2004, nearly 90% of world broadband subscribers were residential. The number of residential broadband subscribers across the world rose to 115.36 million with a 9.24 percent growth over the second quarter. This percentage is nearly 3 points higher than the growth of residential market of Q2 over Q1.

Quantum-Web suggests that the most important factor fuelling broadband growth in advanced markets is the availability of cheaper broadband packages or tariff reductions introduced by service providers. For instance the price of broadband in Europe has fallen by 23% on average since the beginning of the year. This translated into nearly 3 million new residential subscribers across the region.

Quantum-Web is also forecasting double digit growth for the residential segment in the following quarter as the consequence of further price reductions and wider availability of broadband content globally.

Quantum’s third quarter 2004 edition of the World Broadband Statistics comments on the key development in the 3rd quarter on a global basis. This report covers detailed information on 71 countries.

For a copy of the executive summary of this report available in PDF format, email your details to qs@quantum-web.com.

Notes to editor:

The 3rd quarter 2004 World Broadband Statistics Report published on 6th December is available for £995 as a one-off report or for £3,995 for a 1-year subscription (four updates).

For more information about this press release or this report, please contact us at info@quantum-web.com or call +44 (0) 77 99 35 3000

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