The Broadband Forum (aka the DSL Forum) has put out a report based on Point Topic data, saying that Europe has 120 million broadband lines and that it is growing faster than any other region of the world for the second year running and that this now makes up 32% of the total global broadband installations.
Worldwide broadband subscribers have now surpassed 380 million, and given that back in July the same organization said it was 370 million, it looks like the global increase has slowed to around 10 million new lines a quarter. The Broadband Forum reckons that this is an increase of 17% over the past 12 months, but clearly the run rate is slowing from that figure in the last quarter.
The US still has the most broadband subscribers, at 77 million but now China is just 1 million behind and will shortly overtake the US, probably next quarter. A year ago the US had 66 million so has added just under 1 million a month, and China was 59 million so its growth is around 50% faster. One quarter at those rates should see them neck and neck, and after that China will pull away.
After the US and China, comes Japan and after that all the leading countries are European with Germany on 21 million, the UK on 16.7 million, France on 16.6 million, before Korea makes the next entry at 15.3 million, followed by another swathe of Europeans.