The Broadband Forum announces the latest broadband and IPTV statistics, which show impressive growth in the face of the global economic downturn. Its report, prepared for the Forum by industry analysts Point Topic, shows that broadband grew by 16.6 million lines globally in the last quarter alone, with more than three million being added across North America - while IPTV continues to expand strongly.

Broadband lines in the world now top 429.2 million and the last quarter shows growth slightly higher than the previous three month period. Twenty countries grew by 10 percent or more in that time. The biggest growth in the top 20 came from India at 13.4 percent, while the other large gainers were Ukraine (15.2 percent), Egypt (10.6 percent) and Mexico (10.3 percent). Of the total figure, North America grew 3.87 percent to more than 93.5 million.

Top 10 broadband countries

Country                   2008 Q1         2009 Q1

China                    71,034,820      88,088,000
USA                      72,581,920      83,968,547
Japan                    28,836,100      30,631,900
Germany                  21,077,450      24,144,350
France                   16,186,996      18,009,500
UK                       16,318,300      17,661,100
South Korea              14,970,775      15,709,771
Italy                    11,300,077      12,447,533
Brazil                    7,949,000      10,065,200
Canada                    8,859,868       9,533,500
Global Total            269,115,306     310,259,401

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic

North America was again a major factor in the continued IPTV success story, with impressive growth of more than 15 percent over the last quarter and a huge 94.2 percent year-on-year improvement. There are now nearly 4.5 million lines of IPTV across North America.

IPTV subscriptions per region

Region             2008 Q1     2008 Q4     2009 Q1
                    Total       Total       Total    Quarterly    Yearly
                                                      Growth      Growth
Latin America       11,183      21,495      23,467      9.17%     109.85%
Eastern Europe     553,394     955,234   1,158,673     21.30%     109.38%
North America    2,283,601   3,830,507   4,435,102     15.78%      94.22%
South and East
   Asia          2,086,000   3,618,000   3,990,000     10.28%      91.28%
Western Europe   7,799,449  10,367,586  11,375,200      9.72%      45.85%
Asia-Pacific     2,619,035   3,058,182   3,005,015     -1.74%      14.74%
Middle East
and Africa         10,000      10,000      10,000       0.00%       0.00%

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 grew by more than three million lines to reflect a 12.4 percent share of the market, while wireless showed a healthy proportionate increase of over one million lines to a total of 5.58 million.