Worldwide broadband subscriptions surpassed half-a-billion in the last few months, powered by strong growth in China, according to the latest report from the Broadband Forum. The group presented its Broadband and IPTV Industry Update at its quarterly meeting in Hong Kong on Monday.
The total number of broadband subscriber lines hit the 500 million mark in July, the Forum said, basing the number on data from research firm Point Topic. “The Internet and all that it brings has taken hold like no technology since the invention of fire," said Point Topic CEO Oliver Johnson. Broadband subscriptions grew 12 percent over the year ending June 30.
The “powerhouse of global broadband in the 21st century so far" is China, which accounted for nearly half of all the broadband subs added in the second quarter of this year. Almost 5.5 million broadband connections were added in China in Q2, and the Asia-Pacific region in general makes up 41 percent of the broadband market by fixed-line subscriptions.
Faring less well is the U.S., which saw only about 850,000 new broadband links in the second quarter. While fiber-optic broadband services have surged in the U.S., broadband growth in North America as a whole has slowed significantly. The Point Topic researchers attributed that decline to the end of housing-market stimulus programs, but the numbers certainly call into question the effectiveness of the broadband stimulus package first announced in February 2009.
Earlier this year the International Telecommunications Union issued a goal of giving one-half the world’s population access to broadband service by 2015 – a goal that would require a huge build-out of high-speed connections not only in poor and developing nations, but in the rural parts of the United States and other affluent countries.
