European Broadband Grows to 135 Million Subscribers

Europe now accounts for 30 percent of global broadband and 51 percent of all IPTV customers.

The Broadband Forum announced the latest broadband and IPTV statistics at Broadband World Forum-Europe. Based on data provided for the Forum by industry analysts Point Topic (GBS database at http://pointtopic.com/home/gbs/), global broadband grew by 12.9 million lines in the second quarter of 2009 to reach 445 million, while IPTV growth remained strong at 11 percent – reaching 26.9 million.

In the past twelve months, broadband subscriptions in Europe grew 13 percent overall, to reach 135 million, which included an impressive growth of 29 percent in the Eastern European territories. Europe is the second largest broadband region in the world, and holds four of the top 10 country spots.

Europe continues to lead the IPTV success story with 13,631,074 subscribers, a 51 percent growth over the twelve months leading up to July 2009. In the second quarter 2009, there was a healthy six percent growth in Western Europe – where France remains the “champion” IPTV country with more than seven million subscribers – and 12 percent in Eastern Europe, where new services in countries such as Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Russia are in demand.