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IPTV subscribers have more than doubled for the second year running, hitting 15.4 million at the end of March. According a report release today by the Broadband Forum and Point Topic, Asia lead the growth with a 132% increase, with subs expanding to 2.6 million while Europe followed with a 117% growth rate and the largest IPTV user base -- 8.42 million.

The Broadband Forum, formerly the DSL Forum, announced the statistics, which were prepared by Point Topic, today at the Broadband World Forum Asia in Hong Kong. 

Worldwide broadband subscribers have reached over 370 million, with DSL remaining the most dominant access technology with 65% of the world's subscribers.  However, fiber subscriptions have risen by 33% since the beginning of 2007, with over 10 million people connected to a fiber network.  This increase in fiber subscriptions may be attributed to the increased popularity of bandwidth hungry services such as IPTV.  The leading technology delivering IPTV today is ADSL2plus, with 12,049,817 subscribers.

"IPTV operators around the world have shown that systems are scalable and can handle rapid growth in subscriber numbers," said Point Topic senior analyst John Bosnell.  "However, developing and agreeing standards will help these operators deliver IPTV more simply and effectively over a variety of access technologies and help to drive higher up take in other markets."

Regional IPTV subscriber growth worldwide, first quarter 2007 and 2008<‾xml:namespace prefix = o ns = 'urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office' />

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic (www.point-topic.com)