Growth in Broadband connections has begun to slow

Indicating that richer countries have almost reached saturation point with the present generation of the technology, while China and India have yet to see a comparable explosion in always-on users

Data from the broadband analysis group Point Topic, based in London, shows that in the third fourth of last year the amount of international broadband connections grew by 4. 72%, to 328.8m, compared to a 5.16% growth in the past fourth.

"The wealthy countries have got broadband - there are none of them left behind any much, explains Tim Johnson, the party's father and publisher. "But new sources of increase such as China and India have gone through a speedy stage and penetrated the intermediate course, but aren't almost saturated in terms of the amount of users.

That may be down in those cases to geography more than demography, for both countries have potentially enormous middle classes, who are paid well enough to afford a broadband connection but might be too far from an equipped exchange to be able to get it. "India has perhaps 200 million middle-class people, but quality of service is very variable," says Johnson. "It's arguable how many of them can get broadband at all. And it's similar in China."

However, another analysis company, Strategy Analytics of Boston, forecast that there will be more than 1 billion "discrete users" worldwide by the end of this year, assuming that the number of broadband connections grows to 391.4m by the fourth quarter, with an average of 2.58 people using each one.

"The upcoming year will commemorate a significant milestone in broadband acceptance," says Ben Piper, manager of its broadband networks strategies service. He forecasts that the Asia-Pacific area will head the reality in terms of overall users, with subscription increase of 27% his year, and emerging markets accounting for much than 60% overall broadband use.

Point Topic's figures for last autumn display that North America was the alone area to rise more rapidly than previously, adding 3. 29Successuch broadband connections (upward from 3. 14 134521488n the second fourth. Eastern Europe yet leads the reality in percent increase, with its subscriber home growing by 11%, with Russia, Romania and Poland leading the manner.

The figures do not distinguish between copper-based ADSL broadband, whose velocity is limited to between 8 and 24 megabits per second, and fibre-based broadband where speeds can hit 100Mb/s. "What's happening less quick than we would need is the rollout of fiber," Johnson says. "It isn't doing what ADSL did, where there was big increase a few years ago. In terms of fiber, it's in about the same spot as ADSL was in 1998; it's not getting place in because of the price. The need initially for ADSL was because it made a big disagreement to what you could make on the internet. Fibre doesn't still make that.