Forecast: One Billion Global Broadband Users in 2008

"The upcoming year will mark an important milestone in Broadband adoption," says Ben Piper, director of the Strategy Analytics broadband networks strategies service. "Our current models suggest that we will exceed the one billion discrete user threshold by the fourth quarter of 2008."

The Asia-Pacific region will lead the world in terms of total users. Subscription growth in the Asia-Pacific market is anticipated to be 27 percent in 2008. In total, emerging markets will account for over 60 percent of total broadband users.

"While DSL clearly remains the dominant access technology, we are forecasting impressive growth of 'alternative' technologies such as Wimax," says David Mercer, vice-president of the Strategy Analytics digital consumer practice.

Worldwide Broadband Users and Subscriptions (2007-2008)

                       Q4'07   Q1'08   Q2'08   Q3'08   Q4'08
Subscriptions 336.3   350.0   363.8   377.6    391.4
Users              865.2   901.9   938.5   975.2  1011.8