Worldwide broadband subscribers hit 400m mark

There are now 400 million broadband subscribers worldwide, a new report has indicated.

The study, by analysts Point Topic, was put together for the Broadband Forum as the organisation entered its 15th year.

Broadband subscription increased almost six-fold from 57,200 worldwide users in 1998 to more than 280,890 the following year.

Of the total, some 45 million have fibre-optic connections, up from 18,000 in 2002.

According to Point Topic senior analyst Oliver Johnson, when his company began studying the technology it was "still mostly in the technical trial stage".

"Getting to 400 million subscribers in the ten years since then has been one of the fastest rollouts of a major new technology the world has ever seen," he said.

"Now we're in the early days of a new era, which is going to be much more about quality than quantity."

The Broadband Forum added that new technologies like IPTV and Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), as well as the continued adoption of fibre, were big talking points at its last quarterly meeting of the year.