China drives Asian broadband boom

Dylan Bushell-Embling
15 Oct 2009
00:00

The economic crisis had little impact on the Asian broadband market during the year ending in June, with subscribers growing a healthy 18%.

About two-thirds of this growth came from China, which also accounted for 28% of the world's new broadband subs, the Broadband Forum said.

Recent research has shown that Asia is now home to nearly 40% of the world's 444.3 million broadband subscribers, Broadband Forum chairman George Dobrowski said.

"This year has shown that broadband expansion is not limited to the top industrialized countries, but is a key factor in assisting developing nations to gain a foothold in today's tough market," he said.

China continues to lead the world in broadband subscribers, reaching 93.5 million by the end of the quarter. Japan took third place with 31.1 million lines, and was the only nation in the top ten to show increased subscriber growth quarter-on-quarter over the last year.

The only other Asian nation to reach the top ten, South Korea, now has nearly 15.9 million lines.

Australia narrowly beat out India for fourth place among Asian countries, with 7.2 million versus 6.6 million broadband users. Next came Taiwan, followed by Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, New Zealand, Thailand and Indonesia.

The subscriber growth has been accompanied by an increase in international traffic, according to TeleGeography. Traffic has grown 79% globally this year, thanks in part to soaring demand in emerging markets such as south Asia and the Middle East, where traffic more than doubled.

But network operators have taken the increased demand in stride, the research shows. They have added 9.4 Tbps of new capacity this year - a 64% increase, and exceeding the 8.7 Tbps in existence just two years ago.

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