221 Million Broadband Users
Telegeography estimates that there were 221 million broadband lines worldwide at the end of 2005, and that number will reach 286 million by end of 2006, and 448 million by 2010. (Of course, this doesn’t include those who will be using 3G and other wireless technologies to access the Net at high speeds.)
Asia-Pacific 89,573,436
Europe 63,455,527
U.S. & Canada 53,270,000
Global total 221,818,261
I find it interesting that AsiaPacific is leading even though I was lead to believe USA had the biggest infrastructure and not to mention europe also. AsiaPacific has terrible inter-country backbones IMHO so it’s still interesting they have the numbers.
Then again, asia is huge isn’t it ;).
Blaze:
In India, any connection of 256KBPS or higher is known as broadband. Their are more non-corporate Broadband ISPs who will run the cable on roof tops, but it works.
Convergence:
Here in Australia it’s the same deal here with 256kbps. The rest of the world must be laughing at us.
The AsiaPac numbers are really driven by S. Korea and Japan who really have superior broandband infrastructure to the N. America.
In Israel broadband penetration is showing nice figures though the problem is with upload speeds. Cable and ADSL suppliers don’t want to lose their business users who pay for the extra upload so consumer upload speeds are stuck around the 128kbit mark even though download is available up to 5Mbit for very low prices.
In India, the 256 kbps connection is available for as little as $5 a month. It is vital that Indian ISPs increase broadband penetration first and thn start thinking about increasing speeds. Simultaneously there is a lot of effort on to increase the PC penetration as well. Hopefully things will start improving soon.
On the topic of Asia, lets not forget China, which is now the #2 broadband country in the world. I think it is easy to forget the fact that they have just started to pick up momentum. they already are the third largest country in terms of number of PCs just behind Japan. I think around 7% or so of the global total of 900 million. they are going to be only gathering more momentum.
i think in the US it is 256 kbps which is qualified as a broadband service, so India and Australia are not alone in using low speed offerings as “broadband” concept. I have ranted about this so many times, that even I don’t want to hear myself say that. ;-)
There is 2 parts of China. One is a network of modern cities with No.1 Cell phone consumers, No2 “broadband” and No3 PC users. Another part is a huge land but crowded with unlimited labor, but still stays in 50 years ago.
So it is two-fold, China will slow her dizzy growth earlier than most of people think, but will keep a growth for a long time compared with Japan and S. Korean.
What about Latin America? Around 3 M connections (2 M of them in Brazil) in 2004, 6 M forecast for 2008
Source: eMarketer: http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?bbandlatamjun05