10 percent of OECD broadband services now on fibre

Stuart Corner
Friday, 11 June 2010 14:04

IT Industry - Market

The OECD has released new statistics on broadband penetration in OECD countries, as of December 2009 saying that fibre services now make up 11 percent of the total.

Fibre is growing relative to other broadband technologies accounting for half of all broadband connections in Japan (54 percent) and Korea (49 percent). Other leading countries include the Slovak Republic (28 percent) and Sweden (23 percent).

The OECD data include the number of broadband subscribers per country, broadband subscriptions by technology and the percentage of fibre connection in total broadband.

However the OECD has removed data for satellite and fixed wireless service, which it will in future report separately, starting from July.

Using the old methodology of including fixed wireless and satellite the OECD reported a decrease of 0.55 in the number of broadband services per 100 people in Australia. The only other country to show a decrease was Finland. When satellite and fixed wireless users were excluded, broadband services in Australia per 100 people fell 1.52 from December 2008.

According to the OECD, Australia had 23.3 broadband services per 100 inhabitants at 31 December 2009, and 24.3 including fixed wireless and satellite. Total service numbers were, respectively, 5.133 million and 5.347 million.

The OECD says there were 283 million broadband subscriptions in the OECD in December 2009, including those in new member country, Chile. The average penetration rate across the OECD has grown to 23.3 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants up from 22.8 in June 2009.

DSL is still the dominant technology in the OECD, accounting for 60 percent of all lines. Cable makes up 29 percent. The OECD also notes that broadband penetration in China is now close to 10 percent (9.6 percent at December 2009).

The OECD counts any service with a downstream bandwidth in excess of 256kbps as broadband. DSL services used for leased lines are excluded as are 3G, mobile WiMAX and WiFi services, except in rare cases where these are used by fixed service providers in lieu of wired connections.