The Broadband Forum announces the latest IPTV and broadband statistics, showing that the North American IPTV market has more than doubled in size in 2008 -- with growth of 113 percent despite the global economic downturn.

The report, prepared for the Forum by industry analysts Point Topic, also showed a very healthy 19 percent growth of IPTV inside the last quarter, well ahead of other IPTV-focused regions South and East Asia and Latin America, whose last quarter growth both showed 12 percent.

The IPTV figures -- announced by the Broadband Forum at today's opening day of IPTV World Forum in London -- come at the same time as world broadband statistics for 2008 show a 62.6 million line growth to 410.9 million lines. While growth slowed late in the year generally, compared to the same quarter in 2007, several countries showed improved performance in the third quarter of 2008, including France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Singapore and The Philippines.

IPTV global subscriber totals have now reached 21.7 million, which is an increase of 63 percent on the end of 2007 figures.

  IPTV subscribers per region

      Region                 2007 Q4            2008 Q4
  Western Europe            7,045,860         10,388,000
  North America             1,774,671         3,835,544
  South & East Asia         1,840,000         3,615,000
  Asia-Pacific              2,199,828         3,082,182
  Eastern Europe            465,223           884,466
  Latin America             8,991             21,495
  Middle East &
  Africa                    10,000            10,000
  Global Total              13,344,573        21,836,687

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic

As expected, due to the global economic situation, broadband growth slowed, however all countries experienced overall growth during the last year.

    Top ten broadband countries

                      2007 Q4        2008 Q4
    China           66,564,400     83,366,000
    USA             69,964,758     79,074,123
    Japan           28,425,700     30,325,900
    Germany         19,897,616     23,425,150
    France          15,555,068     17,503,518
    UK              15,728,900     17,392,800
    South Korea     14,709,998     15,474,931
    Italy           10,860,650     12,170,080
    Brazil          7,477,400      9,633,300
    Canada          8,658,689      9,386,846

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic

Regionally, over the last quarter, Latin America (7.55 percent), Eastern Europe (6.22 percent) and Middle East and Africa (4.76 percent) were the best percentage growth performers, although all regions continued to report growth of some extent.

 Region broadband view and growth

       Region            2008 Q3        2008 Q4
                          Total          Total         Growth
 Western Europe         102,489,320    105,699,114      3.13%
 South and East Asia    90,222,776     93,496,395       3.63%
 North America          86,185,061     88,460,969       2.64%
 Asia-Pacific           61,940,241     63,285,165       2.17%
 Latin America          24,191,462     26,018,927       7.55%
 Eastern Europe         20,671,116     21,956,239       6.22%
 Middle East and
 Africa                 11,419,696     11,962,810       4.76%

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic

In terms of technology, DSL continues to be the most popular broadband access technology, although fiber has grown twice as fast as either cable or DSL in the 12 months to Q4 2008. This should continue, given the number of new implementations and consumer and business demand for higher speeds. Value-added services such as IPTV are also proving to be strong drivers for FTTx uptake and have driven this technology through the 50 million mark worldwide.