Global Fixed Broadband Lines Climb Steady to 523 Million

Broadband subscriber figures continued to climb steadily in 2010 and ended the year at 523,066,022 – a net addition of over 55 million lines during the year, according to new figures from the Broadband Forum and prepared by Point Topic. The half billion line milestone was surpassed in July 2010.



China continues to dominate the rankings both for total subscribers and net additions as well as the most rapidly growing, in percentage terms, market in the top 10 over the last 12 months. Meanwhile India continues its progress towards the Top 10. It will overtake Spain in the next quarter in terms of total fixed broadband subscribers and there is a possibility it will be in the top 10 by the end of the year.



DSL continued to be the global access leader supporting 331 million subscribers. Cable's market share is eroding and now sits at 106 million, while fiber is growing fast and is now serving 72 million customers. Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and alternative internet access technologies continue to add market share as markets start to infill some areas where for various reasons it is difficult to deploy traditional fixed line access. DSL and fiber both dominate the Asian markets while cable is most popular in the Americas.



Meanwhile by the end of 2010 the total number of IPTV subscribers had reached almost 45.4 million, representing over 11.5 million new subscribers over the year and an annual increase of 34.6%. The fourth quarter was the strongest quarter for IPTV growth, adding more than 3.4 million new subscribers and accounting for 8% of the total growth. Europe held on to its number one regional spot, but the growth rate was lower in comparison to other markets, mostly due to maturing IPTV territories such as France and Belgium. Asia showed strong growth with over 50% for the year and is the one to watch to overtake Europe in 2011 as largest IPTV subscriber base. And although the region started with a low overall number of subscribers, the Middle East and Africa (MEA), had the strongest percentage growth - at 63.5%.

Presenting the report at the IP & TV World Forum in London today, Laurie Adams Gonzalez, Marketing Director of the Broadband Forum, said: "2010 was a banner year for IPTV and broadband. We have watched how broadband is changing the world and creating a connected society that few could have imagined a few years ago. With great success comes real world logistical problems - the surge of new devices coming online will soon exhaust the IPv4 address pool. To address this looming problem, the Broadband Forum focused our resources to ensure specifications were in place for a smooth integration of the new Internet protocol, IPv6 into network and device management around the world."



The BroadbandSuite™ 4.0 IPv6 Toolkit defines the network support of IPv6 from core to user, brings IPv6 to all TR-101 based network deployments, allows remote management of IPv6 devices, is scalable to address trillions of devices, and future enhancements have the potential to enrich the user experience (supporting secure, mobile and nomadic applications) and enable the proliferation of connected user devices. Most importantly, this IPv6 toolkit will help service providers reduce the impact of IPv4 protocol exhaustion on their services today while ensuring the growth of new users, devices and applications continues unhampered.
http://www.broadband-forum.org