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January 17, 2012 By News Staff
Asia continues to be the globe's leading region when it comes to the number of broadband Internet users, according to a report last week from Broadband-Forum.org (.pdf download). And despite the ongoing global economic recession, the broadband market saw its highest growth in two years.
Around the world approximately 581 million people subscribe to some sort of broadband Internet service. This number doesn’t include users who access the Internet via mobile phones. Most users (61.5 percent), according to the report, get broadband via a DSL subscription. Another 19.5 percent get service via cable and 16 percent of broadband Internet users have access to FTTx (fiber-to-the-home, building, curb, etc.) service. Fiber, the report notes, saw 8 percent growth in the third quarter of 2011 — twice the rate of growth compared to 2010.
In the U.S., nearly 5 million more people have broadband Internet access compared to a year ago, with 90.5 million total users.
According to the report, the top 10 countries for Broadband, as of Q3 2011, are:
| Nation | # of Broadband Users |
| China | 152,529,154 |
| USA | 90,512,652 |
| Japan | 35,817,200 |
| Germany | 28,032,650 |
| France | 22,352,200 |
| UK | 20,440,200 |
| Russia | 19,359,900 |
| South Korea | 17,816,717 |
| Brazil | 15,957,000 |
| Italy | 13,660,650 |
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/wireless/The-Top-10-Countries-for-Broadband-Internet.html
It would also be interesting to see the ratio of broadband:dial-up subscribers and/or the percent of households accessing the internet via broadband.
It is always nice to see te US on top (or close to the top) on these lists but ranking countries by users seems somewhat misleading. If you adjust the users by population you get a better understanding of broadband penetration. When you do this the US ranks 5th (29%)behind South Korea (36.7%). France (35%), Germany (34%) and the UK (32%); we remain ahead of Japan (28%), Italy (22.3%), Russia (13.4%), China (11.3%) and Brazil (8.3%). Instead of pushing miles of fiber we should be pushing the applications that create the demand for more fiber.
When I first saw this list, I felt the same way as Mr. Sanger. Raw numbers are fine, but % penetration is more telling. As to the fiber comment - I think IP-TV and VOIP are compelling enough. If only Congress had used the 1996 Telecommunications Act to remove the physical media on the telephone poles from the cable companies and into the hands of the local telcos [who should have been regulated to sell the bandwidth to any communications provider (TV, internet, telephone) at the same price], we would have had better competition for the consumers' dollars. The local telcos, in the quest for more bandwidth to sell, might have implemented FTTH much more rapidly than has occured.