The Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) fixed broadband market reached a value of $20.3 billion in the first half of 2013, showing 5.2% half-on-half growth, according to IDC.
The research firm observed that the region used to see more than 20% fixed broadband growth in previous years, powered by the aggressive operator rollouts and the government-driven broadband projects in markets such as China, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia.
However, the growth in mobile broadband is starting to slow the demand for fixed broadband services. The mobile only household is on the rise.
Despite the pressures the APEJ broadband market will continue to grow at 12.1% CAGR for the next five years, IDC predicts. Emerging markets like Indonesia, the PRC, Thailand and Malaysia still enjoy encouraging growth.
“Among the broadband services, fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) is driving the growth in APEJ region, and China contributes the biggest market share of both total fixed broadband and FTTP,” said Sherrie Huang, research manager of IDC’s Asia/Pacific telecommunications group.
While operators are spending more on network upgrades to satisfy market demand, revenues and ultimately ROI is being squeezed by OTT players, offering rich-media applications which are bandwidth intensive as well as voice services which are chipping away at the core of the operators revenue streams.