Worldwide home broadband connections are set to hit 500 million by next year showing that despite the global recession there is still a huge demand to have fast Internet access.
Futuresource Consulting were the people behind the research that also found that 60% of broadband connections are supplied via standard DSL through the local telephone line, with 20% having their broadband delivered by cable.
Although the saturation of broadband in many developed countries means that new broadband connections won’t grow rapidly like we have seen in previous years, there is however still other countries that are likely to see broadband connections in the home boom in numbers.
India for example currently has only around 2% of households with a broadband connection with around 5 million homes, over the next 4 years the research found that they expect this to rise to as many as 25 million homes.
Other areas that are likely to see a large increase in new broadband customers are Africa and the Middle East where this year alone there could be an estimated growth of 33% according to Patrik Pfandler, Senior Market Analyst of Futuresource Consulting.
In terms of broadband speed Japan and South Korea are the leaders who offer an average broadband speed of 30Mb, this is over twice as fast as the closest European country (Sweden) that has an average of 14Mb. The UK falls even further back than this with an average in the region of 4Mb. The average broadband speed int he USA last year was just 2.7Mb.
With this in mind it calls the UK governments plans for a minimum 2Mb broadband available throughout the UK by 2012 as very unambitious. The recently released Digital Britain report set this as a minimum broadband speed for everyone in the UK to be able to receive.