| Broadband number crunching |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Friday, 21 November 2008 | |
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Rival number cruncher, Point Topic, at least agrees on this 400 million connection figure, and some. It says that, "as the total number of broadband lines in the world passes 400 million Point Topic forecasts that the total in the 40 biggest broadband countries in the world will grow from 393 million by the end of 2008 to 635 million by 2013. Broadband in the rest of the world will grow from 16 million to 48 million lines in the same period, so the world will add 273 million lines to reach 683 million in total. Unfortunately Point Topic does not specify exactly what it means by broadband 'lines' Do these include fixed wireless, or mobile wireless as well? An important question given that 3G Americas has just put out a statement claiming that "3G UMTS/HSPA mobile broadband technology continues its momentum throughout the world, adding more than 100 million subscriptions in the twelve months ending in the third quarter 2008." This "mobile broadband" label might suggest they are talking about data connections, but subsequent statements suggest they are really talking about 3G mobile subscriptions per se. One minute they are talking about 3G UMTS/HSPA and the next about the GSM/HSPA 'family'. All very confusing, and I suspect deliberately so to make the numbers look good and support their contention tht "the uptake of 3G services [has been]...driven by the phenomenal success of the HSPA-enabled USB dongle as a competitive fixed broadband alternative, both on speed and price." However it is impossible to tease out from 3G America's figure exactly how many 3G dongles they think are out there. CONTINUED |
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