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Infonetics Research: Fixed Broadband Subscribers Near a Billion Strong by 2019

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April 16, 2015

Infonetics Research: Fixed Broadband Subscribers Near a Billion Strong by 2019

By Steve Anderson, Contributing TMCnet Writer


For many users out there, broadband is the heart and soul of daily life. Whether working, shopping, gaming or reading—sometimes more than one at once—broadband Internet access often drives it. A new report from Infonetics (News - Alert) Research—now part of IHS—illustrates just how far the concept of fixed broadband is set to go, and just what these numbers might mean.


The Infonetics report—titled “FTTH, DSL, and Cable Subscribers”—shows that, for all the focus on mobile connectivity of late, there are still plenty of people making connections via fixed broadband sources. The report notes that the numbers of fixed broadband subscribers grew by eight percent in 2014, hitting a combined worldwide total of 733 million. Thanks to growth in places like China—which is expected to be the leader for fixed broadband growth, as China Telecom (News - Alert) is currently the leader in subscriber market share worldwide—that number should approach the one billion users mark by 2019.

DSL is currently the biggest source of fixed broadband connectivity, though growth is being seen in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and DOCSIS 3.0 technologies. The Asia Pacific region currently accounts for 50 percent of the world's fixed broadband subscriber count, and will likely continue to be a leader for some time to come. Subscriber numbers are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of five percent from 2014 to 2019.

Infonetics Research (News - Alert) principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV Jeff Heynen noted that streaming video essentially saved the fixed broadband business. As consumers demanded more access to video, that required broadband providers to step up investment in things like FTTX (like fiber-to-the-home, but without the “home” part being strictly necessary) as well as DOCSIS 3.0 just to keep up. With broadband now, as Heynen put it, “...a consumer-driven industry,” further developments will have to keep coming to keep the user base happy.

Some of this has already been seen. A recent discussion from mid-2014 suggested that Comcast (News - Alert) will have its bandwidth cap at 500 gigabytes within five years, with the plan being to keep the cap moving steadily upward such that nearly every user doesn't go over—previously Comcast had noted that 98 percent of the user base doesn't go over 300 gigabytes a month—while still hopefully managing to accommodate increasing demands for data. As more video options become available, including the growth of 4K video, that's only going to hike up the demand for bandwidth, and ISPs will have to be ready to supply that bandwidth or risk losing out to firms that will. Google Fiber can't be everywhere, but anywhere it goes, the market is often destabilized.

There's no doubt that bandwidth is a valuable commodity. The sheer amount of uses for data makes this clear; we shop, we work, we play online, and we need bandwidth to get there. Fixed bandwidth is the access method of choice for many, and we'll only see that grow as more options become available.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino







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