Info Meeting

Despite the crippled world economy, the future of the broadband industry across the globe is looking rosy after it was revealed subscriber numbers are growing faster than previously expected.

New research from analysis group, Point Topic is so positive about the growth of broadband, it’s upped forecasts for the number of fixed broadband lines in the world by the end of this year from 493 million to 496 million. Looking ahead to the five-year forecast these figures have also been increased from 683 million to 695 million.

Explaining the prediction hike, Tim Johnson, chief analyst at Point Topic revealed: “A major reason for the increase has been the sustained high rate of growth in developing countries.” These new findings were enough for Point Topic to rethink its predictions for world broadband growth.

Point Topic collates its results for broadband growth by looking at the proportion of non-broadband homes which adopt broadband in each time period. In turn, this gives a trend growth rate for future periods. It’s previous forecast was found to be a little out of shape as analysts reduced the expected growth rate in most countries to take account of the recession which was starting to take shape.”

Point Topic now forecasts by 2012 Norway will overtake Denmark as the leading major country in terms of broadband take-up.

“At the other end of the scale there is a group of countries where broadband does seem to have been hit quite heavily by the recession,” explains Tim Johnson. “Some already have a high take-up, such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Taiwan, so that broadband is more of an option extra for the few remaining no-net homes. Others, notably the UK and Spain, are facing a tough time economically made worse by a housing slump.”