This latest statistic is representative of the technological developments and increasing geographical spread of broadband over the last few years. Since its inception, broadband has morphed from simple internet access into triple play service delivery - and broadband is now an integral part of our lives, both at home and at work.
In 1998, there were just 57,200 broadband subscribers globally. Only a year later, this number had increased by nearly six times over to 280,890 subscribers worldwide. DSL quickly became the most popular choice of delivery. The past ten years has seen a 600,000 percent increase in the number of subscribers - 300 percent in the last 5 years alone - which now tops the 400 million mark.
Over the same period, access technology evolved to include fiber, which began in 2002 with 18,000 subscribers. Since then, fiber now delivers broadband services to over 45 million people across the globe.
Oliver Johnson, Senior Analyst with Point Topic, explains, "When Point Topic started researching broadband in 1998 it was still mostly in the technical trial stage. Getting to 400 million subscribers in the ten years since then, has been one of the fastest rollouts of a major new technology the world has ever seen. Now we're in the early days of a new era, which is going to be much more about quality than quantity.
"The emphasis is now going to shift to providing high bandwidth, high quality broadband, that can deliver multiple, steady, pin-sharp images for applications. To do this, we've got to have advanced global standards for end-to-end delivery of broadband data streams. This is exactly what the Broadband Forum, working with other standards organizations, is doing, and we believe its role is going to be even more important in the next decade than it has been in the last ten years," adds Oliver.
