A report released by Telecoms & Media predicts that the global broadband market will see strong growth in the coming years. This year, the total number of subscribers is expected to be 190 million, but in five years’ time there should already be 440 million subscribers.
DSL accesses will be vastly higher than the number of cable accesses, representing 77 percent of subscriptions or 332 million users. In contrast, at the same time the cable should not have more than 76 million users.
Five years from now, the countries that will present the highest penetration rate will be Japan, South Korea, Sweden and Finland, since the biggest growth – in number of users – are expected in China and India. On the other hand, the number of accesses in Western Europe, North America and Asia tends to slow down.
Taking into account its population size, in three years, China will have more subscribers than the United States and in 2010 the country will represent a quarter of all existing subscriptions in the world.
According to the same study, in 2010 ten percent of subscribers should still be served by direct fiber technologies, but the evolution of the market itself may change with the advent of WiMAX and other technologies wireless.
The main source of revenue for operators will increasingly be the exchange of accesses for other broadband services, such as television over DSL networks.
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