When measured by the percentage growth, the fastest growing broadband region in the world is Latin America. If it was done on absolute numbers of course it would be Asia Pacific, where China is driving adoption at the rate of around 12 million new subs a year, about three times the number of homes of Latam.
However, when you take ARPU into account it is $30 to $40 in these countries and far lower in China at around $9 to $10, so that means that in revenue terms, the two region remain about the same.
Within Latam the largest two economies by far are Brazil and Mexico and it is Brazil’s 15.8% broadband growth that is driving the region right now, although we expect this to mellow to 9.5% this year and slide down the scales as economic hardship slowly returns to Brazil. In fact, although Mexico’s broadband growth last year was a mere 7.8% we see this slowly coming into line with Brazil over the coming 5 years and actually overhauling it in 2020.
America Movil’s Net Servicos is the fastest growing operator, running on cable hardware, in Brazil adding around 920,000 broadband home last year, with Oi not far behind at 723,000. In Mexico Telmex is actually shrinking and the big grower there is Groupo Televisa trading under the brands Cablemas, Cablevision, Telecable and Cablecom.