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)
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 72 countries.
