Broadband services remain a key driving force in global productivity and communication. Businesses, governments, and individuals continue to rely upon the quality and dependability of high-speed data and broadband services in order to inform, educate, interact and entertain.
On a worldwide basis, household adoption of fixed-line broadband services continues to increase. At the end of 2015, Parks Associates’ estimates had 739 million global households subscribing to a residential fixed-line broadband service, an increase of more than 40 percent since the end of 2010.
Here’s a closer look at several regions around the world with the largest broadband growth potential.
China
With more than 216 million broadband households, China represents 29 percent of all global broadband households. China also leads global markets in the total increase in broadband subscribers, with over 15 million new broadband homes added within the past year.
Despite the high volume of broadband households, less than half of Chinese households currently receive broadband, revealing a substantial opportunity for future growth in China. Though tightly controlled, broadband now provides Chinese consumers with substantially greater access to information, communication, and content.
India
With a populace heavily reliant on mobile communications, just over 15 million of India’s households subscribe to fixed-line broadband. However, government-required digitization of the nation’s cable infrastructure is driving a new wave of fixed-line broadband adoption. While many Indian homes still do not have CPE or connections that allow cable-based broadband services, the initiative has allowed India’s volume increase in broadband households to rival that of China.
Latin America
Growth has slowed recently, but Latin America has been one of the fastest-growing regions for broadband. With 66 million broadband households in 2015, the region expanded its global share of broadband subscribers from 8 percent in 2010 to 9 percent in 2015, outpacing all regions other than Asia/Pacific. Brazil is a top global broadband market by volume, but represents only 39 percent of broadband households within its region. Chile and Venezuela are two of the fastest growing broadband markets in Latin America. Venezuela has increased the number of broadband households by more than 50 percent, and Chile by more than 40 percent since 2012. Several other countries in Latin America also enjoy strong broadband growth, including Colombia (9 percent increase over 2014), Peru (9 percent increase), Mexico (5.5 percent increase) and Argentina (4 percent increase).
Other Regions
In terms of percentage of growth, Africa and the Middle East show the highest global growth rate for broadband, primarily due to the extremely low starting point for broadband penetration among nations in these regions. Volume growth is still occurring, however, and following improved stability, Egypt is now among the top nations in the region in terms of volume growth in broadband subscriptions within the past year.
North America and Western Europe are the most mature broadband markets among global regions, with most nations exceeding 75 percent in broadband penetration. As a result, subscriber growth has slowed. While the U.S., France, and the U.K. are still among the top 10 global subscriber growth markets by volume, the two regions’ collective global share of broadband subscribers has slipped from 41 percent in 2010 to 32 percent in 2015.
Japan and South Korea represent the opposite end of the fixed-line broadband market spectrum from much of Asia — mature, highly-penetrated broadband markets with increasingly intense competition for very-high-speed services. Japanese and South Korean operators were among the world’s first to offer residential gigabit-speed broadband services. Japanese cable operators began offering these speeds in late 2008, while Korean operators joined the fray in late 2014.
Globally, household adoption of fixed-line broadband services continues to increase due to factors such as connected device ownership, always-on access and Wi-Fi and entertainment. New generations of connected products and Internet-based services enter the market with a core assumption that high-speed data connections are easily and readily available — an assumption that is generally true for most developed nations and becoming true for many emerging markets.
More information on this topic is available here in a report offered by Parks Associates.
Brett Sappington is senior director of research at Parks Associates.
