Outlook Series | Over1B Global Broadband Subscribers by 2013

Over1B Global Broadband Subscribers by 2013

Jan. 20, 2010

Consumer enthusiasm for broadband service continues unabated. During calendar year 2009, an average of 8.8 million new broadband subscribers worldwide signed up for service each month. By 2013, In-Stat forecasts that the number of global broadband subscribers will surpass 1 billion.

“The growing popularity of bandwidth-intensive applications, such as watching online video, using IP-based telephony services, and downloading music files, is spurring global demand for broadband Internet connections,” says Mike Paxton, In-Stat analyst.

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

As of December 2009, there were 578 million worldwide broadband subscribers, an increase of 99 million over the year-end 2008 subscriber total.
DSL, mobile wireless, and cable modem service are the leading access technologies, providing 89% of worldwide broadband connections.
Mobile wireless broadband is the second largest access technology (behind DSL) with 18% of total subscribers.
Over the next few years, the number of households with multiple broadband connections will increase significantly. These multiple connection households will commonly have a wired broadband access technology, like DSL or cable modem service, along with a mobile wireless broadband connection.