New research
from Quantum Web suggests that the Asia Pacific region
now commands a global lead in terms of broadband deployment.
The results of World Broadband Market, for the end
of the second quarter of this year, reveal Asia now
has 41% of the world total broadband subscribers,
and the highest penetration of DSL technologies.
Growth for
the quarter demonstrated that Asia Pacific has the
most concentrated residential broadband subscriber
base, but the rate if increase between March and June
had reached just under 5%. The US remains the world’s
largest single market with 30 million subscribers.
Elsewhere,
significant residential growth rates have been achieved,
particularly in the EU accession states, which have
achieved in excess of 12%, or double the world growth
rate.
One of the
key issues confronting broadband service providers
is the speed of migration from dial-up and increasing
the average revenue per user (ARPU). As such, value–added
services are increasingly included in services offering
such as free Anti-virus, Anti-Spam, free SMS and international
roaming to access to the Internet.
The report
nevertheless sounded a word of caution on current
growth. Although the number of broadband subscribers
across the world rose to 118 million with an increase
of 6.46 per cent over the previous quarter, this represented
the lowest quarterly growth rate so far, for broadband
access technologies.
Among the top
20 broadband markets worldwide, Denmark is the newest
entrant with slightly below 1 million subscribers.
This result also highlights the scale of the digital
divide, and challenges that lie ahead in deploying
broadband globally. Indeed, the report notes that
competition in the provision of broadband services
within emerging markets will continue to intensify,
leading to pricing pressure and more importance placed
on performance.
Slovakia has
gained the pole position in the world ranking of fastest
growing broadband market this quarter by adding nearly
100,000 new subscribers to its current base, representing
88 per cent growth to its broadband market.
