Report: DSL Subs Top 100M

LONDON -- Global DSL subscribers sailed past the 100 million mark in February 2005, according to the latest data produced for the DSL Forum by industry analyst, Point Topic. Preliminary figures for 2004 reveal that people are choosing DSL for broadband access at the rate of one every second. Growth in DSL - the world's most popular broadband technology - approached 60%, with over 96 million global DSL subscribers by the year-end.

Newer broadband markets showed the fastest growth throughout 2004. Turkey, which is now approaching half a million DSL subscribers, showed 725% increase in the year, the Czech Republic 589% and Ireland 351%. Mexico, Malaysia, New Zealand and Lithuania all experienced DSL subscriber growth of 100% or more.

Established DSL markets also sustained strong growth in subscriber numbers. China, the world's largest DSL population, saw a 2004 increase in DSL subscribers of more than 8.5 million. In the USA, one of the few countries where DSL does not yet dominate the broadband market, another 3.93 million DSL subscribers were added.

Rapid growth in European Union subscribers in both established and emerging broadband markets, reinforced the EU's position as the number one DSL region worldwide. France led the way with 3.25 million DSL subscribers added over the year. The UK grew by 2.8 million, Italy by 1.73 million and Germany by 1.4 million.

"It is a significant success to have reached the 100 million subscriber milestone, with rapid growth in every region of the world", said Steve Kingdom, newly elected president of the DSL Forum. "It is also fitting that this accomplishment was announced at CeBIT 2005, as consumer electronics and the connected home have been, and will continue to be, major drivers in DSL deployment. We must now turn our sights to facilitating the achievement of our target of 500 million DSL subscribers by 2010".

Tim Johnson of Point Topic said: "While ADSL continues to dominate current DSL connectivity, deployment increasingly includes newer DSL options. ADSL2plus is rapidly growing in Sweden, Norway and France, with trials beginning in the USA and services coming on-stream in the Netherlands in 2005. This is increasingly the basis for triple play services. VDSL had at least five million connections by the end of 2004 - mostly in South Korea, Japan and China. VDSL2, delivering 100 Mbps over a single phone line, may provide new impetus when that is standardised in May 2005. We are also starting to see increased roll out of symmetric DSL services, with 1.2 million subscribers worldwide by the end of 2004."

DSL Forum

Point Topic Ltd.