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Updated Friday, June 24, 2011 9:03 pm TWN, By Leong Hung Yee, The Star/Asia News Network

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Asia is fastest growing market for fixed broadband

SINGAPORE -- Asia remains the fastest growing region for fixed broadband with 16.21 percent year-on-year growth — almost double that of the Unites States.

“Broadband is showing healthy double-digit growth this year. This indicates how vital it has become to businesses, residential consumers and countries,” said Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh at the sideline of CommunicAsia 2011 here.

Broadband Forum is a nonprofit industry consortium focused on broadband adoption.

According to latest figures from Broadband Forum, Asia now accounts for 42 percent of global broadband subscribers — up from 40 percent last year. Fixed broadband subscribers worldwide reached 540.6 million in the first quarter of this year.

With an increase of over 15.2 million subscribers in the first three months of 2011, fixed broadband grew by 2.9 percent.

“That's the biggest quarterly increase in the last two years. You could say that broadband is becoming a utility which could be seen as a negative, but it also means that even during times of economic recession, people are still not giving up their broadband connection,” Mersh said.

Mersh said the strong growth was due to the continuing success of broadband in China with 42 percent of net additions to the global broadband subscribers coming from China as well as from Hong Kong and Macau in the first three months of 2011.

Mersh said the latest numbers indicated the broadband market was “maturing” but still expanding.

Asked if mobile broadband growth in Asia would outpace fixed broadband, he said mobile broadband was the way to access the Internet in certain Asian markets.

Point Topic CEO Oliver Johnson said there was increasingly keen competition to be in the global top 10 of broadband countries.

“As India and Mexico jostle to break into the charts it is likely that Italy will drop out, probably before year-end,” he said.

According to a study by Point Topic, the top 10 fixed broadband countries are China, U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Britain, South Korea, Italy, Brazil and Russia.

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